OF SELBOBNE. 
443 
highly acceptable ; and, in a few reigns after, it was given 
to princes of the blood. ^ In old days gentry resided more 
at home on their estates, and, having fewer resources of 
elegant in-door amusement, spent most of their leisure 
hoars in the field and the pleasures of the chase. A large 
domain, therefore, at a little more than a mile distance, 
and well-stocked with game, must have been a very eligible 
acquisition, affording him influence as well as entertainment; 
and especially as the manorial house of Temple, by its ex- 
alted situation, could command a view of near two-thirds of 
the forest. 
That Gurdon, who had lived some years the life of an 
outlaw, and, at the head of an army of insurgents, was for 
a considerable time in high rebellion against his sovereign, 
should have been guilty of some outrages, and should have 
committed some depredations, is by no means matter of 
wonder. Accordingly we find a distringas against him, 
ordering him to restore to the Bishop of Winchester some 
of the temporalities of that see, which he had taken by 
violence and detained, viz., some lands in Hocheleye, and a 
mill.'^ By a breve, or writ, from the king, he is also en- 
joined to readmit the Bishop of Winchester, and his tenants 
of the parish and town of Farnham, to pasture their horses, 
and other larger cattle, " averia/' in the Forest of Wolmer, 
as had been the usage from time immemorial. This writ is 
dated in the tenth year of the reign of Edward, viz., 1282. 
All the king^s writs directed to Gurdon are addressed in 
the following manner : " Edwardus, Dei gratia, &c. dilecto 
et fideli suo Ade Gurdon salutem ; and again, Custodi 
foreste sue de Wolvemere.^^^ 
In the year 1293 a quarrel between the crews of an 
" Bensted and Kingslej ; a petition of the parishioners concerning 
the three parks in Aliceholt Forest." 
William, first Earl of Dartmouth, and paternal grandfather to the 
present Lord Stawel, was a lessee of the forests of Aliceholt and Wol- 
mer, before Brigadier- General Emanuel Scroope Howe. — G. W. 
^ See Letter 11. of these Antiquities. — G. W. 
^ Hocheleye, now spelt Hawkley, is in the hundred of Sclborne, anii 
has a mill at this day. — G. W. 
3 See p. 27, note 4. — Ed. 
