248 
ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 
declared the priorship void ; et priorat. solacio destitutum esse ; " 
and granted his letters for proceeding to a new election ; when all the 
religious, assembed in the chapter-house, did transfer their power under 
their seal to the bishop, by the following public instrument. 
'^In Dei nomine Amen," &c. A.D. 1478, Mali 19. In the chapter- 
house for the election of a prior for that day, on the free resignation of 
Peter Berne, having celebrated in the first place mass at the high altar 
De spiritu sancto," and having called a chapter by tolling a bell, ut 
moTis est; in the presence of a notary and witnesses appeared personally 
Peter Berne, Thomas Ashford, Stephen Clydgrove, and John Ashton, 
presbyters, and Henry Canwood,* in chapter assembled; and after 
singing the hymn " ' Veni Creator Spiritus,' cum versiculo et oratione 
* Deus qui corda;' declaratque licentia Fundatoris et patroni ; futurum 
priorem eligendi concessa, et constitutione consilii generalis que incipit 
' Quia propter' declaratis: viisque per quas possent ad banc electionem 
procedere," by the decretorwn doctorem, whom the canons had taken to 
direct them — they all and every one " dixerunt et affirmarunt se nolle 
ad aliquam viam procedere ; " — but for this turn only, renounced their 
right, 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 visitor had fully deliberated on the matter, he proceeded to 
the choice of a prior, and elected, by the following instrument, John 
Sharp, alias Glastonbury. 
Pol. 56. Provisio Prioris per Epm. 
Willmus, &c., to our beloved brother in Christ, John Sharp, alias 
Glastonbury, Ecclesie conventualis de Bruton, of the order of 
St. Austin, in the diocese of Bath and Wells, canon-regular — saluiem, 
&c., "De tue circumspectionis industria plurimum confidentes, te 
virum providum et discretum, literarum scientia, et moribus merito 
commendandum," &c. — do appoint you prior — under our seal. " Dat. 
in manerio nostro de Suthwaltham, May 20," 1478, *'et nostre 
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 mis- 
management 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 
* Here we see that all the canons were changed in six years ; and that there 
was quite a new chapter, Berne excepted, between 1472 and 1478 ; for, instead 
of "Wyndesor, London, and Stratfeld, we find Ashford, Clydgrove, Ashton, and 
Can wood, all new men, who were soon gone in their turn off the stage, and are 
heard of no more. For, in six years after, there seem to have been no canons 
at all. 
