446 
ANTIQUITIES 
viz. 1307. It has been observed before tbat Gtirdon had a 
natural son : this person was called by the name of John 
Dastard, alias Wastard, but more probably Bastard ; since 
bastardy in those days was not deemed any disgrace, though 
dastardy was esteemed the greatest. He was married to 
Gunnorie Duncun; and had a tenement and some land 
granted him in Selborne by his sister Johanna. 
LETTER XI. 
HE Knights Templars/ who have been men- 
tioned in a former letter, had considerable 
property in Selborne ; and also a preceptory 
at Sudington, now called Southington, a 
hamlet lying one mile to the east of the vil- 
lage. Bishop Tanner mentions only two such houses of 
The Military Orders of the Religious. 
The Knights Hospitalars of St. John of Jerusalem, afterwards called 
Knights of Rhodes, now of Malta, came into England about the year 
1100, 1 Hen. I. 
The Knights Templars came into England pretty early in Stephen's 
reign, wliich commenced 1135. The order was dissolved in 1312, and 
their estates given by act of Parliament to the Hospitalars in 1323, (all 
in Edw. II.) though many of their estates were never actually enjoyed 
by the said Hospitalars. — Vid. Tanner, p. xxiv. x. 
The commandries of the Hospitalars, and preceptories of Templars, 
were each subordinate to the principal house of their respective religion 
in London. Although these are the different denominations, which 
Tanner at p. xxviii. assigns to the cells of these different orders, yet 
throughout the work very frequent instances occur of preceptories attri- 
buted to the Hospitalars ; and if in some passages of Notitia Monast. 
commandries are attributed to the Templars, it is only where the place 
afterwards became the property of the Hospitalars, and so is there 
indifferently styled preceptory or commandry ; see pp. 243, 263, 276, 
577, 678. But, to account for the first observed inaccuracy, it is pro- 
bable the preceptories of the Templars, when given to the Hospitalars, 
were still vulgarly, however, called by their old name of preceptories ; 
whereas in propriety the societies of the Hospitalars were indeed (as 
has been said) commandries. And such deviation from the strictness of 
