ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 
357 
or edifice was meant. But perhaps all the while the passage 
quoted above from one of my papers " per manum preceptoris 
vel balHvi nostri, qui pro tempore fuerit ibidem/' may help to 
explain the difficulty. For if it be allowed here that preceptor 
and ballivus are synonymous words, then the brother who took 
on him that office resided in the house of the Templars at Sud- 
ington, a preceptory; where he was their preceptor, superintended 
their affairs, received their money ; and, as in the instance there 
mentioned, paid from their chamber, ** camera," as directed : so 
that, according to this explanation, a preceptor was no other than 
a steward, and a preceptorium was his residence. I am well 
aware that, according to strict Latin, the vel should have been 
seu or sive, and the order of the words " preceptoris nostri, vel 
ballivi, qui"— et "ibidem" should have been ibi; ibidem neces- 
sarily having reference to two or more persons : but it will hardly 
be thought fair to apply the niceties of classic rules to the 
Latinity of the thirteenth century, the writers of which seem to 
have aimed at nothing further than to render themselves in- 
telligible. 
There is another remark that we have made, which, I think, 
corroborates what has been advanced ; and that is, that Richard 
Carpenter, preceptor of Sudington, at the time of the transactions 
between the Templars and Selborne Priory, did always sign last 
as a witness in the three deeds : he calls himself frater, it is true, 
among many other brothers, but subscribes with a kind of de- 
ference, as if, for the time being, his office rendered him an 
inferior in the community.* 
• In two or three |ancient records relating^ to St, Oswald's hospital in the city of Worcester, 
printed by Dr. Nash, p. 227 and 228, of his collections for the history of Worcestershire, the words 
preceptorium and preceptoria signify the mastership of the said hospital: *♦ ad preceptorium sive 
magisterium presentavit — preceptorii sive magisterii patronus. Vacavit dicta preceptoria sen 
magisterium — ad preceptoriam et regimen dicti hospitalis — Te preceptorem sive magistrum pre- 
fecimns.^' 
Where preceptorium denotes a building or apartment it may probably mean the master's lodg- 
ings, or at least the preceptor's apartment, whatsoever may have been the office or employment 
of the said preceptor. 
A preceptor is mentioned in Thoresby's Ducatus Leodinensis, or History of Leeds, p. 225, and 
a deed witnessed by the preceptor and chaplain before dates were inserted.— Du Fresne's Supple- 
ment : '* Preceptoriie, prsedia preceptoribus assignata." Cowell, in his Law Dictionary, enume- 
rates sixteen preceptori?e, or preceptories, in England ; but Sudington is not among them. It is 
remarkable that Gurtlerus, in his Historia Templariorum Amstel, 1691, never once mentions the 
word preceptor or preceptorium. 
