306 WHITE 



prior under our seal. " Dat in manerio nostro de Suthwal- 

 tham, May 20," 1478, "et nostre Consec. 31." 



Thus did the bishop, three times out of the four that he was 

 at liberty to nominate, appoint a prior from a distance, a stranger 

 to the place, to govern the convent of Selborne, hoping by this 

 method to have broken the cabal, and to have interrupted that 

 habit of mismanagement that had pervaded the society ; but he 

 acknowledges, in an evidence lying before us, that he never did 

 succeed to his wishes with respect to those late governors, 

 " quos tamen male se habuisse, et inutiliter administrare, et 

 administrasse usque ad presentia tempora post debitam inves- 

 tigationem, etc., invenit." The only time that he appointed 

 from among the canons, he made choice of Peter Berne, for 

 whom he had conceived the greatest esteem and regard. 



When Prior Berne first relinquished his priorship, he re- 

 turned again to his former condition of canon, in which he 

 continued for some years ; but when he was re-chosen, and had 

 abdicated a second time, we find him in a forlorn state, and in 

 danger of being reduced to beggary, had not the bishop of 

 Winchester interposed in his favor, and with great humanity 

 insisted on a provision for him for life. The reason for this 

 difference seems to have been that, in the first case, though 

 in years, he might have been hale and capable of taking his 

 share in the duty of the convent ; in the second he was broken 

 with age, and no longer equal to the functions of a canon. 



Impressed with this idea, the bishop very benevolently inter- 

 ceded in his favor, and laid his injunctions on the new-elected 

 prior in the following manner : 



Fol. 56. " In Dei nomine Amen. Nos Willmus, etc., con- 

 siderantes Petrum Berne," late prior, "in administratione 

 spiritualium et temporalium prioratus laudabiliter vixisse et 

 rexisse ; ipsumque senio et corporis debilitate confractum ; ne 

 in opprobrium religionis mendicari cogatur ; eidem annuam 

 pensionem a Domino Johanne Sharpe, alias Glastonbury, 

 priore moderno," and his successors, and, from the priory or 

 church, to be paid every year during his life, "de voluntate et 

 ex consensu expressis " of the said John Sharp, " sub ea que 

 sequitur forma verborum assignamus : " 



1st. That the said prior and his successors, for the time 



