THE ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE 263 



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 femo- 

 ralibus et camisiis." 1 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 ex- 

 pense ; 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 noisy tumultuous huntings ; or to keep any hounds, 

 by themselves or by others, openly or by stealth, within 

 the convent, or without. 2 



In Item i2th he forbids the canons in office to make 



1 The rule alluded to in Item loth, of not sleeping naked, was enjoined the 

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

 Gurtleri Hist. Templariorum.\G. W.] 



2 Considering the strong propensity in human nature towards the pleasures 

 of the chase, it is not to be wondered that the canons of Selbornc should languish 

 after hunting, when from their situation so near the precincts of Woolmer-forest^ 

 the king's hounds must have been often in hearing, and sometimes in sight from 

 their windows. If the bishop was so offended at these sporting-canons, what 

 would he have said to our modern fox-hunting divines? [G. W.] 



