OF SELBOENE. 
449 
vel hallivi nostri, qui pro tempore fuerit ibiden)/^ till they 
can provide the prior and canons with an equivalent in 
lands or rents within four or five miles of the said convent. 
It is also further agreed^ if the Templars shall be in arrears 
for one year^ that then the prior shall be empowered to 
distrain upon their live stock in Bradeseth. The next 
matter was a grant from Robert de Saunford to the priory 
for ever^ of a good and sufiicient road, cJieminum/' capable 
of admitting carriages, and proper for the drift of their 
larger cattle, from the way which extends from Sudington 
towards Blakemere, on to the lands which the convent pos- 
sesses in Bradeseth. 
The third transaction (though for want of dates we can- 
not say which happened first and which last) was a grant 
from Robert Saunford to the priory of a tenement and 
its appurtenances in the village of Selborne, given to the 
Templars by Americus de Vasci.^ This property, by the 
manner of describing it, — " totum tenementum cum omnibus 
pertinentiis suis, scilicet in terris, & Jiominihus, in pratis & 
pascuis, & nemoribus,^^ &c., seems to have been no incon- 
siderable purchase, and was sold for two hundred marks 
sterling, to be applied for the buying of more land for the 
support of the holy war. 
Prior John is mentioned as the person to whom Vasci's 
land is conveyed. But in Willises list there is no Prior 
John till 1339, several years after the dissolution of the 
order of the Templars in 1312; so that unless Willis is 
wrong, and has omitted a Prior John since 1262 (that being 
the date of his first prior), these transactions must have 
fallen out before that date. 
I find not the least traces of any concerns between Gur- 
don and the Knights Templars; but probably after his 
death his daughter Johanna might have, and might bestow. 
1 Americus Yasci, by his name, must have been an Italian, and had 
been probably a soldier of fortune, and one of Gurdon's captains. 
Americus Yespucio, the person who gave name to the new world, was 
a Florentine. — G. W. 
G G 
