264 
ANTIQUITIES OE SELBORNE. 
the exciseman, and their becoming victuallers for the day without a 
license is overlooked. 
Monasteries enjoyed all sorts of conveniences within themselves. 
Thus, at the priory, a low and moist situation, there were ponds and 
stews for their fish ; at the same place also, and at the Grange in Culver* 
Croft, there were dove-houses ; and on the hill opposite to the Grange 
the prior had a warren, as the names of The Coney-Crofts and Coney 
Croft Hanger plainly testify.f 
E^othing has been said, as yet, respecting the tenure or holding of 
the Selborne estates. Temple and Norton are manor farms, and free- 
holds ; as is the manor of Chapel, near Oakhanger, and also the estate 
at Oakhanger House and Blackmoor. The priory and grange are 
leasehold under Magdalen College, for twenty-one years, renewable 
every seven : all the smaller estates in and round the village are copy- 
hold of inheritance under the college, except the little remains of the 
Gurdon Manor, which had been of old leased out upon lives, but have 
been freed of late by their present lord, as fast as those lives have 
dropped. 
Selborne seems to have derived much of its prosperity from the near 
neighbourhood of the priory. For monasteries were of considerable 
advantage to places where they had their sites and estates, by causing 
great resort, by procuring markets and fairs, by freeing them from the 
cruel oppression of forest laws, and by letting their lands at easy rates. 
But, as soon as the convent was suppressed, the town which it had 
occasioned began to decline, and the market was less frequented ; the 
rough and sequestered situation gave a check to resort, and the neglected 
roads rendered it less and less accessible. 
That it had been a considerable place for size, formerly, appears from 
the largeness of the church, which much exceeds those of the neigh- 
bouring villages ; by the ancient extent of the burying-ground, which, 
from human bones occasionally dug up, is found to have been much 
encroached upon ; by giving a name to the hundred ; by the old 
foundations and ornamented stones, and tracery of windows that have 
been discovered on the north-east side of the village ; and by the many 
vestiges of disused fish-ponds still to be seen around it. For ponds and 
stews were multiplied in the times of popery, that the affluent might 
enjoy some variety at their tables on fast days ; therefore, the more 
they abounded the better probably was the condition of the inhabitantSo 
More Particulass RESPECTiNct the old Family Tortoise, omitteb 
IN the Natural History. 
Because we call this creature an abject reptile, we are too apt to 
undervalue his abilities, and depreciate his powers of instinct. Yet he- 
is, as Mr. Pope says of his lord, 
Much too wise to walk into a well i'^ 
and has so much discernment as not to fall down an haha, but to stop 
and withdraw from the brink with the readiest precaution. 
* Culver^ as has been observed before, is Saxon for a pigeon, 
j A warren was a usual appendage to a manor» 
