328 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 



LETTER XIV. 



"IN the year 1373 Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, held a 

 visitation of his whole diocese ; not only of the secular clergy 

 through the several deaneries, but also of the monasteries, and 

 religious houses of all sorts, which he visited in person. The next 

 year he sent his commissioners with power to correct and reform 

 the several irregularities and abuses which he had discovered in 

 the course of his visitation. 



" Some years afterward, the bishop having visited three several 

 times all the religious houses throughout his diocese, and being- 

 well informed of the state and condition of each, and of the 

 particular abuses which required correction and reformation, be- 

 sides the orders which he had already given, and the remedies 

 which he had occasionally applied by his commissioners, now 

 issued his injunctions to each of them. They were accommodated 

 to their several exigencies, and intended 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." * 



Some of these injunctions I shall here produce ; and they are 

 such as will not fail, I think, to give satisfaction 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 tl 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 parch- 

 ment ; the one large, and the other smaller, and consists of a 

 preamble, thirty-six items, and a conclusion, which altogether 

 evince the patient investigation of the visitor, for which he had 

 always been so remarkable 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. 



* See Lowth's Life of Wykeham. 



