498 
ANTIQUITIES 
the articles fuisse & esse vera;^^ and the commissary^ at 
the request of Preston, concluded the business, and appointed 
Monday, August 8th, for giving his decree in the same 
church of Essher; and it was that day read, and contains 
a recapitulation, with the sentence of union, &c., witnessed 
and attested. 
As soon as the president and fellows of Magdalen Col- 
lege had obtained the decision of the commissary in their 
favour, they proceeded to supplicate the pope, and to entreat 
his holiness that he would give his sanction to the sentence 
of union. Some difificulties were started at Rome ; but 
they were surmounted by the college agent, as appears by 
his letters from that city. At length Pope Innocent VIII. 
by a bulP bearing date the 8th day of June^ in the year of 
our Lord 1486, and in the second year of his pontificate, 
confirmed what had been done, and suppressed the convent. 
Thus fell the considerable and well-endowed Priory of 
Selborne, after it had siibsisted about two hundred and 
fifty-four years ; about seventy-four years after the suppres- 
sion of Priories alien by Henry V., and about fifty years 
before the general dissolution of monasteries by Henry VIII. 
The founder, it is probable, had fondly imagined that the 
sacredness of the institution, and the pious motives on 
which it was established, might have preserved it inviolate 
to the end of time — yet it fell, 
" To teach us that God attributes to place 
No sanctity, if none be thither brought 
By men, who there fi:'equent, or therein dwell." 
Milton's " Paradise Lost." 
^ There is nothing remarkable in this bull of Pope Innocent except 
the statement of the annual revenue of the Priory of Selborne, which is 
therein estimated at 160 /lor. auri; whereas Bishop Godwin sets it at 
£337 155. Q\d. Now a floren, so named, says Camden, because made 
by Florentines, was a gold coin of King Edward III. in value 6*., 
whereof 160 is not one-seventh part of £337 I6s. Q\d. — G. W. 
