ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 361 



universitas vestra, quod licet nos prioratui de Selbourne, &c., pie 

 compacientes sollicitudines pastorales, labores, diligentias quam 

 plurimas per nos & commissarios nostros pro reformatione status 

 ejus impenderimus, justicia id poscente ; nihilominus tamen," &c., 

 as in the article to " d2speratur," dated " in manerio nostro de 

 Esher, Aug. 3d., 1485, & consec. 39." Then on the 6th of August, 

 Preston, in the presence of the other proctors, required that they 

 should be compelled to answer ; when they all allowed the articles, 

 " fuisse & esse vera ; " and the commissary, at the request of Preston, 

 concluded the business, and appointed Monday, August 8th, for 

 giving his decree in the same church of Esher; and it was that 

 day read, and contains a recapitulation, with the sentence of union, 

 &c., witnessed and attested. 



As soon as the president and fellows of Magdalene College had 

 obtained the decision of the commissary in their favour, they 

 proceeded to supplicate the pope, and to entreat his holiness that 

 he would give his sanction to the sentence of union. Some 

 difficulties were started at Rome ; but they were surmounted by the 

 college agent, as appears by his letters from that city. At length 

 Pope Innocent VIII., by a bull* bearing date the 8th of June, in 

 the year of our Lord 1486, and in the second year of his pontifi- 

 cate, confirmed what had been done, and suppressed the convent. 



Thus fell the considerable and welt-endowed priory of Selborne 

 after it had subsisted about two hundred and fifty-four years ; about 

 seventy-four years after the suppression of priories alien by Henry 

 V., and about fifty years before the general dissolution of monas- 

 teries by Henry VIII. The founder, it is probable, had fondly 

 imagined that the sacredness of the institution, and the pious 

 motives on which it was established, might have preserved it 

 inviolate to the end of time yet it fell 



"To teach us that God attributes to place 

 No sanctity, if none be thither brought 

 By men, who there frequent, or therein dwell." 



MILTON'S Paradise Lost. 



* There is nothing remarkable in this bull of Pope Innocent, except t'ie statement of the 

 annual revenue of the Priory of Selborne, which is therein estimated at 160 flor. auri ; 

 whereas Bishop Godwin sets it at 337/. 155. 6d. Now a fiSren, so named, says Camden . 

 because made by Florentius, was a gold coin of King Edward III., in value 6s., whereof 

 i6u is not one seventh part of 337/. i$s. 6\d. 



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