OF SELBOENE. 
491 
How Jolm Sliarp_, alias Glastonbury, acquitted himself in 
his prior ship, and in what manner he made a vacancy, 
whether by resignation, or death, or whether he was removed 
by the visiter, 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 Rupibus 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}'\ 
Nich. de Cantia. el. . . 1262. 
* 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. 
