OF SELBORNK. 571 



to correct the abuses introduced, and to recall them all 

 to a strict observation of the rules of their respective 

 orders. Many of these injunctions are still extant, 

 and are evident monuments of the care and attention 

 with which he discharged this part of his episcopal 

 duty 1 ." 



Some of these injunctions I shall here produce; and 

 they are such as will not fail, I think, to give satis- 

 faction to the antiquary, both as never having been 

 published before, and as they are a curious picture of 

 monastic irregularities at that time. 



The documents that I allude to are contained in the 

 Notabilis Visitatio de Seleburne, held at the Priory of 

 that place, by Wykeham in person, in the year 1387. 



This evidence, in the original, is written on two skins 

 of parchment ; the one large, and the other smaller, and 

 consists of a preamble, thirty-six items, and a conclu- 

 sion, which altogether evince the patient investigation 

 of the visiter, for which he had always been so remark- 

 able in all matters of moment, and how much he had 

 at heart the regularity of those institutions, of whose 

 efficacy in their prayers for the dead he was so firmly 

 persuaded. As the bishop was so much in earnest, we 

 may be assured that he had nothing in view but to cor- 

 rect and reform what he found amiss ; and was under 

 no bias to blacken or misrepresent, as the commis- 

 sioners of Thomas Lord Cromwell seem in part to have 

 done at the time of the reformation 2 . We may there- 

 fore with reason suppose that the bishop gives us an 

 exact delineation of the morals and manners of the 

 canons of Selborne at that juncture ; and that what he 

 found they had omitted he enjoins them ; and for what 

 they have done amiss, and contrary to their rules and 

 statutes, he reproves them ; and threatens them with 

 punishment suitable to their irregularities. 



1 See Lowth's Life of Wykeham. 



2 Letters of this sort from Dr. Layton to Thomas Lord Cromwell, are 

 still extant. 



