298 THE ANTIQUITIES 



Austin, in the diocese of Bath and Wells, canon-regular salutem, 

 &c. "De tue circumspectionis industria plurimum confidentes, 

 " et te virum providum et discretum, literarum scientia, et mori- 

 "bus merito coramendandum/' &c. do appoint you prior under 

 our seal. " Dat. in manerio nostro de Suthwaltham, May 20, 

 " 1478, et nostre Consec. 31." 



Thus did the bishop, three times out of the four that he was 

 at liberty to nominate, appoint a prior from a distance, a stranger 

 to the place, to govern the convent of Selborne, hoping by this 

 method to have broken the cabal, and to have interrupted that 

 habit of mismanagement that had pervaded the society : but he 

 acknowledges, in an evidence lying before us, that he never did 

 succeed to his wishes with respect to those late governors, 

 "quos tamen male se habuisse, et inutiliter administrare, et 

 " administrasse usque ad presentia tempora post debitam in- 

 " vestigationem, &c. invenit". The only time that he appointed 

 from among the canons, he made choice of Peter Berne, for whom 

 he had conceived the greatest esteem and regard. 



When prior Berne first relinquished his priorship, he returned 

 again to his former condition of canon, in which he continued 

 for some years : but when he was re-chosen, and had abdicated 

 a second time, we find him in a forlorn state, and in danger of 

 being reduced to beggary, had not the bishop of Winchester 

 interposed in his favour, and with great humanity insisted on a 

 provision for him for life. The reason for this difference seems 

 to have been, that, in the first case, though in years, he might 

 have been hale and capable of taking his share in the duty of 

 the convent ; in the second, he was broken with age, and no 

 longer equal to the functions of a canon. 



Impressed with this idea the bishop very benevolently in- 

 terceded in his favour, and laid his injunctions on the new-elected 

 prior in the following manner. 



Fol. 56. "In Dei nomine Amen. Nos Willmus, &c. con- 

 " siderantes Petrum Berne," late prior, " in administratione 

 " spiritualium et temporalium prioratus laudabiliter vixisse et 

 " rexisse ; ipsumque senio et corporis debilitate confractum ; ne 

 "in opprobrium religionis mendicari cogatur ; eidem annuam 

 " pensionem a Domino Johanne Sharp, alias Glastonbury, priore 

 " moderno," and his successors, and, from the Priory or church, 

 to be payed every year during his life, " de voluntate et ex con- 

 "sensu expressis" of the said John Sharp, "sub ea que sequitur 

 " forma verborum assignamus " ; 



