ANTIQUITIES OF SELBOENE. 
219 
evening. This unmerited and unexpected lenity melted the heart of 
the rugged Gurdon at once ; he became in an instant a loyal and useful 
subject^ trusted and employed in matters of moment by Edward when 
king, and confided in till the day of his death. 
LETTEE IX. 
It has been hinted in a fo^rmer letter that Sir Adam Gurdon had 
availed himself by marrying women of property. By my evidences it 
appears that he had three wives^ and probably in the following order : 
Constantia, Ameria, and Agnes. The first of these ladies, who was the 
companion of his middle life, seems to have been a person of consider- 
able fortune, which she inherited from Thomas Makerel, a gentleman 
of Selborne, who was either her father or uncle. The second, Ameria, 
calls herself the quondam wife of Sir Adam, " quae fui uxor/' &c., and 
talks of her sons under age. Now Gurdon had no son ; and beside, 
Agnes, in another document, says, ^' Ego Agnes quondam uxor Domini 
Adce Gurdon in pura et ligea viduitate mea but Gurdon could not 
leave two widows ; and therefore it seems probable that he had been 
divorced from Ameria, who afterwards married and had sons. By 
Agnes Sir Adam had a daughter Johanna, who was his heiress, to 
whom Agnes in her life-time surrendered part of her jointure : he had 
also a bastard son. 
Sir Adam seems to have inhabited the house now called Temple, 
lying about two miles east of the church, which had been the property 
of Thomas Makerel. 
In the year 1262 he petitioned the prior of Selborne in his own 
name, and that of his wife Constantia only, for leave to build him an 
oratory in his manor-house, "in curia sua." Licenses of this sort were 
frequently obtained by men of fortune and rank from the bishop of the 
diocese, the archbishop, and sometimes, as I have seen instances, from 
the pope ; not only for convenience-sake, and on account of distance,, 
and the badness of the roads, but as a matter of state and distinction. 
Why the owner should apply to the prior, in preference to the bishop 
of the diocese, and how the former became competent to such a grant, 
I cannot say ; but that the priors of Selborne did take that privilege is 
plain, because some years afterward, in 1280, Prior Richard granted to 
Henry Waterford and his wife Nicholaa, a licence to build an oratory 
in their court-house, " curia sua de Waterford," in which they might 
celebrate divine service, saving the rights of the mother church of 
Basynges. Yet all the while the prior of Selborne grants with such 
reserve and caution, as if in doubt of his power, and leaves Gurdon and 
his lady answerable in future to the bishop, or his ordinary, or to the 
vicar for the time being, in case they should infringe the rights of the 
mother church of Selborne. 
The manor-house, called " Temple," is at present a single building, 
running in length from south to north, and has been occupied as a 
