314 WHITE 



giving his decree in the same church of Esher, and it was 

 that day read, and contains a recapitulation, with the sentence 

 of union, etc., witnessed and attested. 



As soon as the president and fellows of Magdalen College 

 had obtained the decision of the commissary in their favor, 

 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 college agent, as appears by his 

 letters from that city. At length Pope Innocent VIII., by a 

 bull 2 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 Sel- 

 borne 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 sacred- 

 ness 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. 

 NOTES 



1 Ecclesia Conventualis de Novo Loco was the monastery afterwards 

 called the New Minster, or Abbey of Hyde, in the city of Winchester. 

 Should any intelligent reader wonder to see that the prior of Hyde Abbey 

 was commissary to the bishop of Winton, and should conclude that there 

 was a mistake in titles and that the abbot must have been here meant, he 

 will be pleased to recollect that this person was the second in rank ; for, 

 " next under the abbot, in every abbey, was the prior." Pref. to Notit. 

 Monast., p. 29. Besides, abbots were great personages and too high in 

 station to submit to any office under the bishop. G. W. 



2 There is nothing remarkable in this bull of Pope Innocent, except 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 \$s. 6\d. 

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

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

 part of ^337 15*. 6\d. G. W. 



