212 THE ANTIQUITIES [LETT. 



LETTER XVII. 



INFORMATION being sent to Rome respecting the havoc and 

 spoil that was carrying on among the revenues and lands ot 

 the Priory of Selborne, as we may suppose by the Bishop of 

 A\ 7 inchester, its visitor, Pope Martin, 1 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 rights 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 cer- 

 tain things alienated from the Priory of Seleburne. Pontif. 

 sui aim. 1. 



"Martinus Eps. servus servorum Dei. Dilecto filio Priori 

 de Suthvale 2 Wyntouien. dioc. Salutem & apostolicam ben. Ad 

 audientiam nostrarn pervenit quam tarn dilecti filii prior et con- 

 ventus monasterii de Selebmn per Priorem soliti gubernari 

 ordinis S". Augustini Winton. dioc. quam de predecessores eorum 

 decimas, terras, redditus, domos, possessiones, vineas, 3 et quedam 

 alia bona ad monasterium ipsum spectantia, datis super hoc 



1 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. 



2 Should have been no doubt Southwick, a priory under Portsdo\vn. 



3 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 Vol. iii. of Archselogia. 



In the instance above the pope's secretary might insert vineas merely 

 because they were a species of cultivation fainilar to him in Italy. 



