ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 345 j 
This Jo. de Venur was a man of property at Oakhanger, and 
lived probably at the spot now called Chapel-farm. The grant 
bears date the l7th year of the reign of Henry III. [yiz. 1233.] 
It would be tedious to enumerate every little grant for lands 
or tenements that might be produced from my vouchers. I 
shall therefore pass over all such for the present, and conclude j 
this letter with a remark that must strike every thinking person 
with some degree of wonder. No sooner had a monastic insti- 
tution got a footing, but the neighbourhood began to be touched 
with a secret and religious awe. Every person round was de- 
sirous to promote so good a work ; and either by sale, by grant, 
or by gift in reversion, was ambitious of appearing a benefactor. 
They who had not lands to spare gave roads to accommodate the 
infant foundation. The religious were not backward in keeping 
up this pious propensity, which they observed 'so readily influ- 
enced the breasts of men. Thus did the more opulent monas- 
teries add house to house, and field to field ; and by degrees 
manor to manor : till at last " there was no place left but 
every district around became appropriated to the purposes of 
their founders, and every precinct was drawn into the vortex. 
LETTER VIII. 
Our forefathers in this village were no doubt as busy and bust- 
ling, and as important, as Ourselves : yet have their names and 
transactions been forgotten from century to century, and have 
sunk into oblivion ; nor has this happened only to the vulgar, 
but even to men remarkable and famous in their generation. I 
was led into this train of thinking by finding in my vouchers 
that Sir Adam Gurdon was an inhabitant of Selborne, and a man 
of the first rank and property in the parish. By Sir Adam Gur- 
don I would be understood to mean that leading and accom- 
plished malecontent in the Mountfort faction, who distinguished 
himself by his daring conduct in the reign of Henry III. The 
first that we hear of this person in my papers is, that with two 
others he was bailiff of Alton before the sixteenth of Henry III. 
viz. about 1231, and then not knighted. Who Gurdon was, and 
whence he came, does not appear : yet there is reason to suspect 
that he was originally a mere soldier of fortune, who had raised 
himself by marrying women of property. The name of Gurdon 
