330 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE, 
the nave and the choir, and the gates of their cloister opening into 
the fields, be constantly kept shut until their first choir service is 
over in the morning, at dinner time, and when they meet at their 
evening collation.* 
Item 6th mentions that several of the canons are found to be 
very ignorant and illiterate, and enjoins the prior to see that they 
be better instructed by a proper master. 
Item 8th. The canons are here accused of refusing to accept 
of their statutable clothing year by year, and of demanding a 
certain specified sum of money, as if it were their annual rent 
and due. This the bishop forbids, and orders that the canons 
shall be clothed out of the revenue of the priory, and the old 
garments be laid by in a chamber and given to the poor according 
to the rule of Saint Augustine. 
In Item 9th is a complaint that some of the canons are given to 
wander out of the precincts of the convent without leave ; and that 
others ride to their manors and farms, under pretence of inspecting 
the concerns of the society, when they please, and stay as long 
as they please. But they are enjoined never to stir either about 
their own private concerns or the business of the convent without 
leave from the prior: and no canon is to go alone, but to havea 
grave brother to accompany him. 
The injunction in Item roth, at this distance of time appears 
rather ludicrous ; but the visitor seems to be very serious on the 
occasion, and says that it has been evidently proved to him that 
some of the canons, living dissolutely after the flesh, and not after 
the spirit, sleep naked in their beds without their breeches and 
shirts, “absque femoralibus et camisiis.” | He enjoins that these 
culprits shall be punished by severe fasting, especially if they shall 
be found to be faulty a third time; and threatens the prior and 
sub-prior with suspension if they do not correct this enormity. 
In Item 11th the good bishop is very wroth with some of the 
canons, whom he finds to be professed hunters and sportsmen, 
keeping hounds, and publicly attending hunting-matches. These 
pursuits, he says, occasion much dissipation, danger to the soul and 
body, and frequent expense ; he, therefore, wishing to extirpate this 
vice wholly from the convent, “ radicibus extirpare,” does absolutely 
enjoin the canons never intentionally to be present at any public 
* A collation was a meal or repast on a fast-day in lieu of a supper. 
+ The rule alluded to in item roth, of not sleeping naked, was enjoined the Knight’s 
Templars, who also were subject to the rules of St. Augustine. —See GuRTLERI Hist¢. 
Templariorum. 
