458 ANTIQUITIES 



" Some years afterward, the bishop having visited three 

 several times all the religious houses throughout his diocese, 

 and being well informed of the state and condition of each, 

 and of the particular abuses which required correction and 

 reformation, besides the orders which he had already given, 

 and the remedies which he had occasionally applied by his 

 commissioners, now issued his injunctions to each of them. 

 They were accommodated to their several exigencies, and 

 intended to correct the abuses introduced, and to recall 

 them all to a strict observation of the rules of their respec- 

 tive orders. Many of these injunctions are still extant, and 

 are evident monuments of the care and attention with which 

 he discharged this part of his episcopal duty." 1 



Some of these injunctions I shall here produce ; and 

 they are such as will not fail, I think, to give satisfaction to 

 the antiquary, both as never having been published before, 

 and as they are a curious picture of monastic irregularities 

 at that time. 



The documents that I allude to are contained in the 

 Notabilis Visitatio de Seleburne, held at the Priory of that 

 place, by Wykeham in person, in the year 1387. 



This evidence, in the original, is written on two skins of 

 parchment ; the one large, and the other smaller, and con- 

 sists of a preamble, thirty-six items, and a conclusion, which 

 altogether evince the patient investigation of the visitor, 

 for which he had always been so remarkable in all matters of 

 moment, and how much he had at heart the regularity of 

 those institutions, of whose efficacy in their prayers for the 

 dead he was so firmly persuaded. As the bishop was so 

 much in earnest, we may be assured that he had nothing in 

 view but to correct and reform what he found amiss ; and 

 was undur no bias to blacken or misrepresent, as the com- 

 missioners of Thomas Lord Cromwell seem in part to have 

 done at the time of the reformation. 2 We may thert'lore 

 with reason suppose that the bishop gives us an exact de- 



1 See "Lowth's Life of Wykeham." G. W. 



2 Letters of this sort from Dr. Layton to Thomas Lord Cromwell, are 

 still extant. G. W. 



