366 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 



As soon as the president and fellows of Magdalen College had 

 obtained the decision of the commissary in their favour, they 

 proceeded to supplicate the Pope, and to entreat His Holiness 

 that he would give his sanction to the sentence of union. Some 

 difficulties were started at Rome ; but they were surmounted by 

 the c ollege agent, as appears by his letters from that city. At 

 length Pope Innocent VIII., by a bull* bearing date 8th June, 

 in the year of our Lord 1486, and in the second year of his 

 pontificate, confirmed what had been done, and suppressed the 

 convent. 



Thus fell the considerable and well- endowed priory of Selborne 

 after it had subsisted about two hundred and fifty-four years ; 

 about seventy-four years after the suppression of priories alien by 

 Henry V., and about fifty years before the general dissolution of 

 monasteries by Henry VIII. The founder, it is probable, had 

 fondly imagined that the sacredness of the institution, and the 

 pious motives on which it was established, might have preserved 

 it inviolate to the end of time yet it fell 



" To teach us that God attributes to place 

 No sanctity, if none be thither brought 

 By men, who there frequent, or therein dwell." 



MILTON'S Paradise Lost. 



LETTER XXV. 



WAINFLEET did not long enjoy the satisfaction arising from this 

 new acquisition; but departed this life in a few months after he 

 had effected the union of the priory with his late founded college ; 

 and was succeeded in the see of Winchester, by Peter Courtney, 

 some time towards the end of the year 1486. 



* There is nothing remarkable in this bull of Pope Innocentj^xcept the 

 statement of the annual revenue of the Priory of Selborne, which is therein 

 estimated at 160 flor. auri ; whereas Bishop Godwin sets it at ^337 l$s. 6\d. 

 Now a floren, so named, says Camden, because made by Florentius, was a gold 

 coin of King Edward III., in value 6s., whereof 160 is not one-seventh part of 

 ^337 15'- 6i</. 



