letter, had considerable property in Selborne; and also a preceptory at Sudington, now called Southington, a hamlet lying one mile to the east of the village. Bishop Tanner mentions only two such houses of the Templars in all the county of Southampton, viz., Godesfield, founded by Henry de Blois, bishop of Winchester, and South Badeisley, a preceptory of the Knights Templars, and afterwards of St. John of Jerusalem, valued at one hundred and eighteen pounds sixteen shillings and sevenpence per annum. Here then was a preceptory unnoticed by antiquaries, between the village and Temple. Whatever the edifice of the preceptory might have been, it has long since been dilapidated; and the whole hamlet contains now only one mean farm-house, though there were two in the memory of man.
It has been usual for the religious of different orders to fall into great dissensions, and especially when they were near neighbours. Instances of this sort we have heard of between the monks of Canterbury; and again between the old abbey of St. Swythun,
ceptories, which had originally been vested in them, having never belonged to the Templars at all.—See in Archer, p. 609; Tanner, p. 300, col. I, 720, n.e.
It is observable that the very statute for the dissolution of the Hospitalars holds the same language; for there, in the enumeration of particulars occur “commandries, preceptories.”—CODEX, p. 1190. Now this intercommunity of names, and that in an Act of Parliament too, made some of our ablest antiquaries look upon a preceptory and commandry as strictly synonymous; accordingly we find Camden, in his “Britannia,” explaining præceptoria in the text by a commandry in the margin, p. 356. 510.—J. L.
Commandry, a manor or chief messuage with lands, etc., belonging to the priory of St. John of Jerusalem; and he who had the government of such house was called the commander, who could not dispose of it but to the use of the priory, only taking thence his own sustenance, according to his degree, who was usually a brother of the same priory.—Cowell. He adds (confounding these with preceptories) they are in many places termed temples, as Temple Bruere in Lincolnshire, etc. Præceptories were possessed by the more eminent sort of Templars, whom the chief master created and called Præceptores Templi. Cowell, who refers to Stephens De Jurisd. lib. iv. c. 10, no. 27.
Placita de juratis et assis coram Salom. de Roff et sociis suis justic. Itiner. apud Wynton, &c., anno regni R. Edwardi fil. Reg. Hen. octavo.—“et Magr. Milicie Templi in Angl. ht emendasse panis et suis [cerevisiæ] in Sodington, et nescint q°. war. et—et magist. Milicie Templi non ven id distr.”—Chapter House, Westminster.
