374 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 
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and grange are leasehold under Magdalen College, for twenty-one 
years, renewable every seven : all the smaller estates in and round 
the village are copyhold of inheritance under the college, except the 
little remains of the Gurdon Manor, which had been of old leased 
out upon lives, but have been freed of late by their present lord, as 
fast as those lives have dropped. 
Selborne seems to have derived much of its prosperity from the 
near neighbourhood of the priory. For monasteries were of con- 
siderable advantage to places where they had their sites and estates, 
by causing great resort, by procuring markets and fairs, by freeing 
them from the cruel oppression of forest laws, and by letting their 
lands at easy rates. But, as soon as the convent was suppressed, 
the town which it had occasioned began to decline, and the market 
was less frequented ; the rough and sequestered situation gave a 
check to resort, and the neglected roads rendered it less and less 
accessible. 
That it had been a considerable place for size, formerly, appears 
from the largeness of the church, which much exceeds those of the 
neighbouring villages ; by the ancient extent of the burying-ground, 
which, from human bones occasionally dug up, is found to have 
been much encroached upon; by giving a name to the hundred ; 
by the old foundations and ornamented stones, and tracery of 
windows that have been discovered on the north-east side of the 
village ; and by the many vestiges of disused fish-ponds still to be 
seen around it. For ponds and stews were multiplied in the times 
of popery, that the affluent might enjoy some variety at their tables 
on fast days ; therefore, the more they abounded the better probably 
was the condition of the inhabitants. 
MORE PARTICULARS RESPECTING THE OLD FAMILY TORTOISE, 
OMITTED IN THE NATURAL HISTORY. 
BECAUSE we call this creature an abject reptile, we are too apt to 
undervalue his abilities, and depreciate his powers of instinct. Yet 
he is, as Mr. Pope says of his lord, 
‘© _______ Muci too wise to walk into a well: ’’ 
and has so much discernment as not to fall down an haha, but to 
stop and withdraw from the brink with the readiest precaution. 
Though he loves warm weather he avoids the hot sun; because 
his thick shell, when once heated, would, as the poet says of solid 
