XXIII.] 
OF SELBORNE. 
witnesses^ with the other oaths before the chancellor, who de- 
creed he should be inducted and installed ; as was done that 
same day. 
How John Sharp, alias Glastonbury, acquitted himself in his 
priorship, and in what manner he made a vacancy, whether l)y 
resignation, or death, or wdiether he was removed by tlie visitor, 
does not appear : we only find that some time in the year 1484-, 
there w^as no prior, and that the bishop nominated canon Ash- 
ford to fill the vacancy. 
LETTER XXIII. 
This Thomas Ashford was most undoubtedly the last prior of 
Selborne ; and therefore here will be the proper place to say 
something concerning a list of the priors, and to endeavour to 
improve that already given by others. 
At the end of Bishop Tanner's " JSTotitia 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 Rupibus 
would have rectified this omission ; but, when it w^as examined, 
no information of the sort was to be found. Erom 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}] 
Mch. de Cantia el 1262. 
^ See, in Letter XI. of these Antiquities, the reason why prior John , 
who had transactions with the Knight Templars, is phiced m the list before 
the year 1262. 
