OF BELBOBNE. 
489 
riglit, and unanimously transferred their power to the 
bishop, the ordinary of the place, promising to receive 
whom he should provide; and appointed a proctor to 
present the instrument to the bishop under their seal; 
and required their notary to draw it up in due form, &c., 
subscribed by the notary. 
After the visiter had fully deliberated on the matter, he 
proceeded to the choice of a prior, and elected, by the fol- 
lowing instrument, John Sharp, alias Glastonbury. 
Fol. 56. Provisio Prioris per Epm. 
Wilimus, &c. to our beloved brother in Christ, John 
Sharp, alias Glastenbury, Ecclesie conventualis de Bruton, 
of the order of St. Austin, in the diocese of Bath and Wells, 
canon-regular, salutem, &c. De tue circumspectionis 
industria plurimum confidantes, te virum providum et dia- 
cretum, literarum scientia, et moribus merito commendan- 
dum, &c.^^ — do appoint you prior — under our seal. Dat. 
in manerio nostro de Suthwaltham, May 20, 1478, et nostra 
Consec. 31." 
Thus did the bishop, three times out of the four that he 
was at liberty to nominate, appoint a prior from a distance, 
a stranger to the place, to govern the convent of Selborne, 
hoping by this method to have broken the cabal, and to 
have interrupted that habit of mismanagement that had ^ 
pervaded the society : but he acknowledges, in an evidence 
lying before us, that he never did succeed to his wishes with 
respect to those late governors, — " quos tamen male se 
habuisse, et inutiliter administrare, et administrasse usque 
ad presentia tempora post debitam investigationem, &c. 
invenit." The only time that he appointed from among 
the canons, he made choice of Peter Berne, for whom he 
had conceived the greatest esteem and regard. 
When prior Berne first relinquished his priorship, he 
returned again to his former condition of canon, in which 
he continued for some years ; but when he was re-chosen, 
and had abdicated a second time, we find him in a forlorn 
state, and in danger of being reduced to beggary, had not 
the Bishop of Winchester interposed in his favour, and with 
great humanity insisted on a provision for him for lifcc 
