LETTER XVII 



INFORMATION being sent to Rome respecting the havock 

 and spoil that was carrying on among the revenues and 

 lands of the Priory of Selborne, as we may suppose by the 

 bishop of Winchester, it's visitor, Pope Martin^ as soon as 

 the news of these proceedings came before him, issued 

 forth a bull, in which he enjoins his commissary imme- 

 diately to revoke all the property that had been alienated. 



In this instrument his holiness accuses the prior and 

 canons of having granted away (they themselves and their 

 predecessors) to certain clerks and laymen their tithes, 

 lands, rents, tenements, and possessions, to some of them 

 for their lives, to others for an undue term of years, and 

 to some again for a perpetuity, to the great and heavy 

 detriment of the monastery; and these leases were granted, 

 he continues to add, under their own hands, with the 

 sanction of an oath and the renunciation of all right and 

 claims, and under penalties, if the right was not made 

 good. But it will be best to give an abstract from the 

 bull. 



N. 298. Pope Martin's bull touching the revoking of 

 certaine things alienated from the Priory of Seleburne. 

 Pontif. sui ann. i. 



" Martinus Eps. servus servorum Dei. Dilecto filio 

 Priori de Suthvale* Wyntonien, dioc. Salutem & aposto- 

 licam ben. Ad audientiam nostram pervenit quam tarn 

 dilecti filii prior et conventus monasterii de Seleburn per 



1 Pope Martin V. chosen about 1417. He attempted to reform the church, 

 but died in 1431, just as he had summoned the Council of Basil. [G. W.] 



z Should have been no doubt Southwick, a priory under Portsdown. [G. W.] 

 VOL. II. 2 73 2 M 



