ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 335 



Item 5th. " To take care that the doors of their church and 

 priory be so attended to that no suspected and disorderly females, 

 ' suspectae et aliae inhonestae,' pass through their choir and 

 cloister in the dark ; " and to see that the doors of their church 

 between 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 cer- 

 tain 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 have a brave brother to accompany him. 



The injunction in Item loth, 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."t He enjoins that these 



* A collation was a meal or repast on a fast-day in lieu of a supper. 



f The rule alluded to in Item loth, of not sleeping naked, was enjoined the 

 Knights Templars, who were also subject to the rules of St. Augustine. See 

 GURTLERI Hist. Teinplarionim. 



