OF SELBOENE. 425 



cents, reduced. The trustees are the vicar and the renters 

 or owners of Temple, Priory, Grange, Blackmore, and Oak- 

 hanger House, for the time being. This gentleman seemed 

 inclined to have put the vicarial premises in a comfortable 

 state ; and began, by building a solid stone wall round the 

 front court, and another in the lower yard, between that and 

 the neighbouring garden ; but was interrupted by death 

 from fulfilling his laudable intentions. [He lies buried in 

 the chancel of his church ; and a black slab, within the rails 

 of the communion table and near the north wall, com- 

 memorates him.] 



April [7], 1680, Barnabas Long became vicar. [Dr. 

 Long appears to have resigned the vicarage in consequence 

 of obtaining other preferment. We learn from Wood that 

 on the 6th of February, 1681, he was installed prebend of 

 Botesant in the church of York ; and, on the 24th of May, 

 1682, of Stillington also. From the same authority it may 

 be added that he died in 1685.] 



June [23], 1681. ^ This living was now in such low 

 estimation in Magdalen College, that it descended to a 

 junior fellow, Gilbert White, M.A., who was instituted 

 to it in the thirty-first year of his age. At his first coming 

 he ceiled the chancel, and also floored and wainscoted the 

 parlour and hall, which before were paved with stone and 

 had naked walls ; he enlarged the kitchen and brewhouse, 

 and dug a cellar and well : he also built a large new barn in 

 the lower yard, removed the hovels in the front court, 

 which he laid out in walks and borders ; and entirely 

 planned the back garden, before a rude field with a stone-pit 

 in the midst of it. By his will he gave and bequeathed 

 " the sum of forty pounds to be laid out in the most neces- 

 sary repairs of the church : that is, in strengthening and 

 securing such parts as seem decaying and dangerous." 

 With this sum two large buttresses were erected to support 

 the east end of the south wall of the church ; and the gable 

 end wall of the west end of the south aisle was new built 

 from the ground. 



By his will also he gave tf One hundred pounds to be 

 laid out on lands; the yearly rents whereof shall be em- 



