XIV,] 
OF SELBORNE. 
511 
people of both sexes throngli tlieir convent, as if a thoroiiglifare, 
from whence many disorders may and have arisen." 
Item 5th. " To take care that the doors of their church and 
Priory be so attended that no suspected and disorderly females, 
' suspectoe et aliae inhonestse/ pass through their choir and 
cloister in the dark ; " and to see that the doors of their church 
between the nave and the choir, and the gates of their cloister 
opening into the fields, be constantly keep shut until their first 
choir-service is over in the morning, at dinner time, and when 
they meet at their evening collation.^ 
Item 6 til mentions that several of the canons are found to be 
very ignorant and illiterate, and enjoins the prior to see that 
they be better instructed by a proper master. 
Item 8th. The canons are here accused of refusing to accept 
of their statutable clothing year by year, and of demanding a 
certain specified sum of money, as if it were their annual rent 
and due. This the bishop forbids, and orders that the canons 
shall be clothed out of the revenue of the Priory, and the old 
garments be laid by in a chamber and given to the poor, accord- 
ing to the rule of St Augustine. 
In Item 9th is a complaint that some of the canons are given 
to wander out of the precincts of the convent without leave ; 
and that others ride to their manors and farms, under pretence 
of inspecting the concerns of the society, when they please, and 
stay as long as they please. But they are enjoined never to 
st'r either about their own private concerns or the business of 
the convent without leave from the prior : and no canon is to 
^^0 alone, but to have a grave brother to accompany him. 
The injunction in Item 10th, at this distance of time, appears 
ather ludicrous ; but the visitor seems to be very serious on 
he occasion, and says that it has been evidently proved to him 
hat some of the canons, living dissolutely after the flesh, and 
not after the spirit, sleep naked in their beds without their 
breeches and shirts, "absque femoralibus et camisiis.^ He 
^ A collation was a meal or repast on a fast day in lieu of a supper. 
2 The rule alluded to in item 10th, of not sleeping naked, was enjoined the 
Knights Templars, who also were subject to the rules of St. Augustine. — See 
GuRTLERi Hist. Temijlarioriim. 
