458 
ANTIQUITIES 
" Some years afterward^ tlie bishop having visited threa 
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.^"*^ 
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 Yisitatio 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 eflScacy 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 und(jr 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.^ We may thej't'lore 
with reason suppose that the bishop gives us an exact de- 
1 See "Lowth's Life of Wykeham."— G. W. 
^ Letters of this sort from Dr. Lajton to Thomas Lord CromweU, a/e 
still extant. — G. W. 
