Sir Adam, was married, I find, to Richard Achard; she also grants to the prior and convent lands and tenements in the village of Selborne, which her father obtained from Thomas Makerel; and also all her goods and chattels in Selborne for the consideration of two hundred pounds sterling. This last business was transacted in the first year of Edward II., viz., 1307. It has been observed before that Gurdon 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.
The Knights Templars,* who have been mentioned in a former
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, I Hen. I.
The Knights Templars came into England pretty early in Stephen’s reign, which 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. 24, 10.
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. 37 assigns to the cells of these different orders, yet throughout the work very frequent instances occur of preceptories attributed 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 p. 243, 263, 276, 577, 678. But, to account for the first observed inaccuracy, it is probable the preceptories of the Templars, when given to the Hospitalars, were still vulgarly, however, called by their old name of preceptories; whereas in propriety societies of the Hospitalars were indeed (as has been said) commandaries. And such deviation from the strictness of expression in this case might occasion those societies of Hospitalars also to be indifferently called pre-
