580 ANTIQUITIES 



LETTER XVII. 



INFORMATION being sent to Rome respecting the 

 havock and spoil that was carrying on among the reve- 

 nues and lands of the Priory of Selborne, as we may 

 suppose by the Bishop of Winchester, its visiter, 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 renuncia- 

 tion of all right 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 certaine things alienated from the Priory of Sele- 

 burne. Pontif. sui ann. 1. 



" Martinus Eps. servus servorum Dei. Dilecto filio 

 Priori de Suthvale 2 Wyntonien. dioc. Salutem & apos- 

 tolicam ben. Ad audientiam nostram pervenit quam 

 tain dilecti filii prior et conventus monasterii de Sele- 

 burn per Priorem solid gubernari ordinis S u . Augustini 

 Wintoii. dioc. quam de predecessores eorum decimas, 



1 Pope Martin V. chosen about 14 17. He attempted to reform the church, 

 but died in 1431,just as he had summoned the council of Basle. 



2 Should have been no doubt Southwick, a priory under Portsdown. 



