ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 
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‘“‘IN the year 1373 Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, held a 
visitation of his whole diocese; not only of the secular clergy 
through the several deaneries, but also of the monasteries, and 
religious houses of all sorts, which he visited in person. The next 
year he sent his commissioners with power to correct and reform 
the several irregularities and abuses which he had discovered in 
the course of his visitation. 
“Some years afterward, the bishop having visited three several] 
times all the religious houses throughout his diocese, and being 
well informed of the state and condition of each, and of the 
particular abuses which required correction and reformation, be- 
sides the orders which he had already given, and the remedies 
which he had occasionally applied by his commissioners, now 
issued his injunctions to each of them. They were accommodated 
to their several exigencies, and intended to correct the abuses 
introduced, and to recall them all to a strict observation of the 
rules of their respective orders. Many of these injunctions are 
still extant, and are evident monuments of the care and attention 
with which he discharged this part of his episcopal duty.” * 
Some of these injunctions I shall here produce ; and they are 
such as will not fail, I think, to give satisfaction to the antiquary, 
both as never having been published before, and as they are a 
curious picture of monastic irregularities at that time. 
The documents that I allude to are contained in the “ Notabilis 
Visitatio de Seleburne,” held at the priory of that place, by 
Wykeham in person, in the year 1387. 
This evidence, in the original, is written on two skins of parch- 
ment ; the one large, and the other smaller, and consists of a 
preamble, thirty-six items, and a conclusion, which altogether 
evince the patient investigation of the visitor, for which he had 
always been so remarkable in all matters of moment, and how 
much he had at heart the regularity of those institutions, of whose 
efficacy in their prayers for the dead he was so firmly persuaded. 
* See Lowth’s Life of Wykeham. 
