330 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 



the nave and the choir, and the gates of their cloister opening into 

 the fields, be constantly kept shut until their first choir service is 

 over in the morning, at dinner time, and when they meet at their 

 evening collation.* 



Item 6th mentions that several of the canons are found to be 

 very ignorant and illiterate, and enjoins the prior to see that they 

 be better instructed by a proper master. 



Item 8th. The canons are here accused of refusing to accept 

 of their statutable clothing year by year, and of demanding a 

 certain specified sum of money, as if it were their annual rent 

 and due. This the bishop forbids, and orders that the canons 

 shall be clothed out of the revenue of the priory, and the old 

 garments "be laid by in a chamber and given to the poor according 

 to the rule of Saint Augustine. 



In Item Qth is a complaint that some of the canons are given to 

 wander out of the precincts of the convent without leave ; and that 

 others ride to their manors and farms, under pretence of inspecting 

 the concerns of the society, when they please, and stay as long 

 as they please. But they are enjoined never to stir either about 

 their own private concerns or the business of the convent without 

 leave from the prior : and no canon is to go alone, but to have a 

 grave brother to accompany him. 



The injunction in Item loth, at this distance of time appears 

 rather ludicrous ; but the visitor seems to be very serious on the 

 occasion, and says that it has been evidently proved to him that 

 some of the canons, living dissolutely after the flesh, and not after 

 the spirit, sleep naked in their beds without their breeches and 

 shirts, " absque femoralibus et camisiis." f He enjoins that these 

 culprits shall be punished by severe fasting, especially if they shall 

 be found to be faulty a third time ; and threatens the prior and 

 sub-prior with suspension if they do not correct this enormity. 



In Item nth the good bishop is very wroth with some of the 

 canons, whom he finds to be professed hunters and sportsmen, 

 keeping hounds, and publicly attending hunting-matches. These 

 pursuits, he says, occasion much dissipation, danger to the soul and 

 body, and frequent expense ; he, therefore, wishing to extirpate this 

 vice wholly from the convent, " radicibus extirpare" does absolutely 

 enjoin the canons never intentionally to be present at any public 



* A collation was a meal or repast on a fast- day in lieu of a supper. 



t The rule alluded to in item icth, of not sleeping naked, was enjoined the Knight's 

 Templars, who also were subject to the rules of St. Augustine. See GURTLERI Hist. 

 Tenlplariorum. 



