ANTIQUITIES OF SELBOENE 
217 
priories, suppressed 2 Henry Y., viz., 1414, where may be seen as 
follows : — 
s. 
Sele, Sussex, 
SELEBURN. 
Shirburn. . 
This appeared to me from the first to have been an oversight, before 
I had seen my authentic evidences. For priories alien, a few con- 
ventual ones excepted, were little better than granges to foreign abbeys, 
and their priors little more than bailiffs removeable at will ; whereas 
the priory of Selborne possessed the valuable estates and manors of 
Selborne, Achangre, Norton, Brompden, Bassinges, Basingstoke, and 
Natele ; and the prior challenged the right of pillory, thurcet, and 
furcas, and every manorial privilege. 
I find next a grant from Jo. de Yenur, or Yenuz, to the prior of 
Selborne, — de tota mora [a moor or bog] ubi Berne oritur, usque ad 
campum vivarii, et de prato voc. Sydenmeade cum abutt: et de 
cursu aque molendini." And also a grant in reversion unius virgate 
terre," (a yard land) in Achangre at the death of Richard Actedene his 
sister's husband, who had no child. He was to present a pair of gloves 
of one penny value to the prior and canons, to be given annually by 
the said Richard ; and to quit all claim to the said lands in reversion, 
provided the prior and canons would engage annually to pay to the 
king, through the hands of his bailiffs of Aulton, ten shillings at four 
quarterly payments, "pro omnibus serviciis, consuetudinibus, exac- 
tionibus, et demandis." 
This Jo. de Yenur was a man of property at Oakhanger, and lived 
probably at the spot now called Chapel-farm. The grant bears date 
the 17th year of the reign of Henry III. (viz. 1233.) 
It would be tedious to enumerate every little grant for lands or 
tenements that might be produced from my vouchers. I shall there- 
fore pass over all such for the present, and conclude this letter with a 
remark that must strike every thinking person with some degree of 
wonder. No sooner had a monastic institution got a footing, but the 
neighbourhood began to be touched with a secret and religious awe. 
Every person round was desirous to promote so good a work; and 
either by sale, by grant, or by gift in reversion, was ambitious of 
appearing a benefactor. They who had not lands to spare gave roads 
to accommodate the infant foundation. The religious were not back- 
ward in keeping up this pious propensity, which they observed so 
readily influenced the breasts of men. Thus did the more opulent 
monasteries add house to house, and field to field, and by degrees 
manor to manor, till at last " there was no place left ; " but every 
district around became appropriated to the purposes of their founders, 
and every precinct was drawn into the vortex. 
