264 ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 



the exciseman, and their becoming victuallers for the day without a 

 license is overlooked. 



Monasteries enjoyed all sorts of conveniences within themselves. 

 Thus, at the priory, a low and moist situation, there were ponds and 

 stews for their fish ; at the same place also, and at the Grange in Culver* 

 Croft, there were dove-houses ; and on the hill opposite to the Grange 

 the prior had a warren, as the names of The Coney-Crofts and Coney 

 Croft Hanger plainly testify.f 



Nothing has been said, as yet, respecting the tenure or holding of 

 the Selborne estates. Temple and Norton are manor farms, and free- 

 holds ; as is the manor of Chapel, near Oakhanger, and also the estate 

 at Oakhanger House and Blackmoor. The priory and grange are 

 leasehold under Magdalen College, for twenty-one years, renewable 

 every seven : all the smaller estates in and round the village are copy- 

 hold of inheritance under the college, except the little remains of the 

 Gurdon Manor, which had been of old leased out upon lives, but have 

 been freed of late by their present lord, as fast as those lives have 

 dropped. 



Selborne seems to have derived much of its prosperity from the near 

 neighbourhood of the priory. For monasteries were of considerable 

 advantage to places where they had their sites and estates, by causing 

 great resort, by procuring markets and fairs, by freeing them from the 

 cruel oppression of forest laws, and by letting their lands at easy rates. 

 But, as soon as the convent was suppressed, the town which it had 

 occasioned began to decline, and the market was less frequented ; the 

 rough and sequestered situation gave a check to resort, and the neglected 

 roads rendered it less and less accessible. 



That it had been a considerable place for size, formerly, appears from 

 the largeness of the church, which much exceeds those of the neigh- 

 bouring villages ; by the ancient extent of the burying-ground, which, 

 from human bones occasionally dug up, is found to have been much 

 encroached upon ; by giving a name to the hundred ; by the old 

 foundations and ornamented stones, and tracery of windows that have 

 been discovered on the north-east side of the village ; and by the many 

 vestiges of disused fish-ponds still to be seen around it. For ponds and 

 stews were multiplied in the times of popery, that the affluent might 

 enjoy some variety at their tables on fast days; therefore, the more 

 they abounded the better probably was the condition of the inhabitants. 



MORE PARTICULARS RESPECTING THE OLD FAMILY TORTOISE, OMITTED 

 IN THE NATURAL HISTORY. 



BECAUSE we call this creature an abject reptile, we are too apt to 

 undervalue his abilities, and depreciate his powers of instinct. Yet he 

 is, as Mr. Pope says of his lord, 



" Much too wise to walk into a well :'* 



and has so much discernment as not to fall down an haha, but to stop 

 and withdraw from the brink with the readiest precaution. 



* Culver, as has been observed before, is Saxon for a pigeon. 

 t A wan-en was a usual appendage to a manor. 



