OF SELBOENE 305 



"universitas vestra, quod licet nos prioratui de Selebourne, &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 " desperatur," dated "in 

 "manerio nostro de Essher, Aug. 3d, 14-85, & consec. 3.9". 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 Essher ; and it was that day read, and contains a re- 

 capitulation, with the sentence of union, &c. witnessed and 

 attested. 



As soon as the president and fellows of Magdalen 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 diffi- 

 culties 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 1 bearing date the 8th day of June, 

 in the year of our Lord I486, and in the second year of his ponti- 

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



Thus fell the considerable and well-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 

 monasteries 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. 12 



1 There is nothing remarkable in this bull oipope Innocent except the statement 

 of the annual revenue of the Priory of Selborne, which is therein estimated at 160 

 flor. auri ; whereas bishop Godwin sets it at 3377. 155. 6d. Now &floren, so named, 

 says Camden, because made by Florentines, was a gold coin of king Edward III. 

 in value 6s. whereof 160 is not one seventh part of 337^ 151. 6d. 



a [XL, 836-39.] 



20 



