344 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 



LETTER XVII. 



INFORMATION being sent to Rome respecting the havoc and spoil 

 that was carrying on among the revenues and lands of the Priory 

 of Selborne, as we may suppose by the Bishop of Winchester, its 

 visitor, Pope Martin,* as soon as the news of these proceedings 

 came before him, issued forth a bull, in which he enjoins his 

 commissary immediately to revoke all the property that had been 

 alienated. 



In this instrument his holiness accuses the prior and canons of 

 having granted away (they themselves and their predecessors) to 

 certain clerks and laymen their tithes, lands, rents, tenements, and 

 possessions, to some of them for their lives, to others for an undue 

 term of years, and to some again for a perpetuity, to the great and 

 heavy detriment of the monastery ; and these leases were granted, 

 he continues to add, under their own hands, with the sanction of 

 an oath and the renunciation of all right and claims, and under 

 penalties, if the right was not made good. But it will be best to 

 give an abstract from the bull. 



N. 298. Pope Martin's bull touching the revoking of certaine 

 things alienated from the Priory of Seleburne. Pontif. sui ann. i. 



"Martinus Eps. servus servorum Dei. Dilecto filio Priori d 

 Suthvale t Wyntonien, dioc. Salutem & apostolicam ben. Ad 

 audientiam nostram pervenit quam tarn dilecti filii prior et con- 

 ventus monasterii de Seleburn per Priorem soliti gubernari ordinis 

 S". Augustini Winton, dioc. quam de predecessores eorum decimas, 

 terras, redditus, domes, possessiones, vineas,J et quedam alia bona 



* Pope Martin V. chosen about 1417. He attempted to reform the church, 

 but died in 1431, just as he had summoned the Council of Basil. 



f Should have been no doubt Southwick, a priory under Portsdown. 



j Mr. Barrington is of opinion that anciently the English vinea was in almost 

 every instance an orchard ; not perhaps always of apples merely, but of other 

 fruits ; as cherries, plums, and currants. We still say a plum or cherry-orchard. 

 See Archisologia, vol. iii. 



In the instance above, the Pope's secretary might insert vineas merely because 

 they were a species of cultivation familiar to him in Italy. 



