252 
ANTiQUniES OP SELBOUNE. 
se habuisse ac inutiliter administrare, et administrasse, usque ad 
presentia tempora post debitam investigationem,&c., invenit." So that 
he despaired with all his care : " statum ejusdem reparare vel restaurare:; 
et considerata temporis malicia, et preteritis timendo et conjecturando 
futura, de aliqua bona et sancta religione ejusdem ordinis, &c., juxta 
piam intentionem primevi fundatoris ibidem habend. desperatur." 
William Wainfleet, Bishop of Winchester, founded his college of 
Saint Mary Magdalene, in the University of Oxford, in or about the 
year 1459 ; but the revenues proving insufficient for so large and noble 
an establishment, the college supplicated the founder to augment its 
income by putting it in possession of the estates belonging to the 
Priory of Selborne, now become a deserted convent, without canons or 
prior. The president and fellows state the circumstances of their 
numerous institution and scanty provision, and the ruinous and 
perverted condition of the Priory. The bishop appoints commissaries 
to inquire into the state of the said monastery; and, if found 
expedient, to confirm the appropriation of it to the college, which 
soon after appoints attorneys to take possession, September 24, 1484. 
But the way to give the reader a thorough insight respecting this 
transaction, will be to transcribe a farther proportion of the process of 
the impropriation from the beginning, which will lay open the manner 
of proceeding, and show the consent of the parties. 
Impropriatio Selborne, 1485. 
Uniyersis sancte matris ecclesie filiis, &c. Eicardus Dei gratia prior 
ecclesie conventualis de Novo Loco, &c.,* ad universitatem vestre 
notltie deducimus, &c., quod coram nobis commissario predicto in 
ecclesia parochial! S*\ Georgii de Esher, Diet. Winton. dioc. 3°. die 
Augusti, A.D. 1485. Indictione tertia pontificat. Innocent! 8 . ann. 
1'"''. judicialiter comparuit venerabilis vir Jacobus Preston, S. T. P. 
infrascriptus, et exhibuit literas comissionis — quas quidem per 
magistrum Thomam Somercrotes notarium publicum, &c., leg! fecimus, 
tenorem sequentem in se continentes." The same as in No. 103, but 
dated — "In manerio nostro de Esher, Augusti 1 . A.D. 1485, et 
nostre confec. anno 39." [No. 103 is repeated in a book containing 
the like process in the preceding year by the same commissary, in the 
parish church of St. Andrew the Apostle, at Farnham, Sept. 6th, anno 
1434.] "Post quarum literarum lecturam — dictus magister Jacobus 
Preston, quasdam procuratorias literas mag. Richard! Mayhewe pre- 
sidentis, ut assevuit, collegii beate Marie Magdalene, &c., sigillo 
rotundo communi, &c., in cera rubea impresso sigillatas realiter 
exhibuit, &c., et pro eisdem dnis suis, &c., fecit se partem, ac nobis 
* Ecclesja Conventualis de Novo Loco was the monastery afterwards called tlie 
New Minster, or Abbey of Hyde, in the city of Winchester. Should any 
intelligent reader wonder to see that the prior of Hyde Abbey was commissary 
to the Bishop of Winton, and should conclude that there was a mistake in titles, 
and that the abbot must have been here meant ; he will be pleased to recollect 
that this person was the second in rank ; for, "next under the abbot, in every 
abbey, was the prior. "—Pr?/. to Notit. Monast., p. 29. Besides, abbots were great 
personages, and too high in station to submit to any of&ce under the bishop. 
