252 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 



se habuisse ac inutiliter administrare, et administrasse, usque ad 

 presentia tempora post debitam investigationem,&c., invenit." So that 

 he despaired with all his care : " statum ejusdem reparare vel restaurare:; 

 et considerata temporis malicia, et preteritis timendo et conjecturando 

 futura, de aliqua bona et sancta religione ejusdem ordinis, &c., juxta 

 piam intentionem primevi fundatoris ibidem habend. desperatur." 



William Wainfleet, Bishop of Winchester, founded his college of 

 Saint Mary Magdalene, in the University of Oxford, in or about the 

 year 1 459 ; but the revenues proving insufficient for so large and noble 

 an establishment, the college supplicated the founder to augment its 

 income by putting it in possession of the estates belonging to the 

 Priory of Selborne, now become a deserted convent, without canons or 

 prior. The president and fellows state the circumstances of their 

 numerous institution and scanty provision, and the ruinous and 

 perverted condition of the Priory. The bishop appoints commissaries 

 to inquire into the state of the said monastery; and, if found 

 expedient, to confirm the appropriation of it to the college, which 

 soon after appoints attorneys to take possession, September 24, 1484. 

 But the way to give the reader a thorough insight respecting this 

 transaction, will be to transcribe a farther proportion of the process of 

 the impropriation from the beginning, which will lay open the manner 

 of proceeding, and show the consent of the parties. 



IMPROPRIATIO SELBORNE, 1485. 



" Universis sancte matris ecclesie filiis, &c. Bicardus Dei gratia prior 

 ecclesie conventualis de Novo Loco, &c.,* ad universitatem vestre 

 notitie deducimus, &c., quod coram nobis commissario predicto in 

 ecclesia parochiali S tl . Georgii de Esher, Diet. Winton. dioc. 3. die 

 Augusti, A.D. 1485. Indictione tertia pontificat. Innocenti 8 . ann. 

 l mo . judicialiter comparuit venerabilis vir Jacobus Preston, S. T. P. 

 infrascriptus, et exhibuit literas comissionis quas quidem per 

 magistrum Thomam Somercrotes notarium publicum, &c., legi fecimus, 

 tenorem sequentem in se continentes." The same as in No. 103, but 

 dated "In manerio nostro de Esher, Augusti 1 . A.D. 1485, 'et 

 nostre confec. anno 39." [No. 103 is repeated in a book containing 

 the like process in the preceding year by the same commissary, in the 

 parish church of St. Andrew the Apostle, at Farnham, Sept. 6th, anno 

 1434.] " Post quarum literarum lecturam dictus magister Jacobus 

 Preston, quasdam procuratorias literas mag. Eichardi Mayhewe pre- 

 sidentis, ut asseruit, collegii beate Marie Magdalene, &c., sigillo 

 rotundo communi, &c., in cera rubea impresso sigillatas realiter 

 exhibuit, &c., et pro eisdem dnis suis, &c., fecit se partem, ac nobis 



* Ecclesia Conventualis de Novo Loco was the monastery afterwards called the 

 New Minster, or Abbey of Hyde, in the city of Winchester. Should any 

 intelligent reader wonder to see that the prior of Hyde Abbey was commissary 

 to the Bishop of Winton, and should conclude that there was a mistake in titles, 

 and that the abbot must have been here meant ; he will be pleased to recollect 

 that this person was the second in rank; for, "next under the abbot, in every 

 abbey, was the prior." Pref. to Notit. Monast., p. 29. Besides, abbots were great 

 personages, and too high in station to submit to any office under the bishop. 



