290 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



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 mismanage- 

 ment 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 ad- 

 ministrasse usque ad presentia tempora post debitam 

 investigationem, &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 for- 

 lorn 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 

 interceded in his favour, and laid his injunctions on the 

 new-elected prior in the following manner. 



Fol. 56. " In Dei nomine Amen. Nos WillmuSj &c., 

 considerantes Petrum Berne t " late prior, "in administra- 

 tione 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 Sharpe, 

 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 consensu expressis" 

 of the said John Sharpe " sub ea que sequitur forma ver- 

 borum assignamus : " 



