OF SELBORNE. 491 



How John Sharp, alias Glastonbury, acquitted himself in 

 his priorship, and in what manner he made a vacancy, 

 whether by resignation, or death, or whether he was removed 

 by the visitor, does not appear : we only find that some time 

 in the year 1484 there was no prior, and that the bishop 

 nominated canon Ashford to fill the vacancy. 



LETTER XXIII. 



HIS Thomas Ashford was most undoubtedly 

 the last prior of Selborne ; and therefore here 

 will be the proper place to say something con- 

 cerning a list of the priors, and to endeavour 

 to improve that already given by others. 

 At the end of Bishop Tanner's Notitia Monastica, the 

 folio edition, among Brown Willis's Principals of Religious 

 Houses, occur the names of eleven of the priors of Selborne, 

 with dates. But this list is imperfect, and particularly at 

 the beginning ; for though the Priory was founded in 1232, 

 yet it commences with Nich. de Cantia, elected in 1262 ; so 

 that for the first thirty years no prior is mentioned ; yet 

 there must have been one or more. We were in hopes that 

 the register of Peter de Eupibus would have rectified this 

 omission ; but, when it was examined, no information of the 

 sort was to be found. From the year 1410 the list is much 

 corrected and improved ; and the reader may depend on its 

 being thenceforward very exact. 



A List of the Priors of Selborne Priory, from Brown 

 Willis's Principals of Religious Houses, with additions 

 within [ ] by the Author. 



[John was prior, sine dat. l ~\ 



Nich. de Cantia. el. 1262. 



1 See, in Letter XI. of these Antiquities, the reason why prior John 



, who had transactions with the Knights Templars, is placed in the 



list before the year 1262. G. W. 



