364 
ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE. 
stated times, and wholly to abstain from frivolous conversa- 
tion/' 
Item 4th. " Not to permit such frequent passing of secular 
people of both sexes through their convent, as if a thoroughfare, 
from whence many disorders may and have arisen/' 
Item 5th. " To take care that the doors of their church and 
Priory be so attended to that no suspected and disorderly females, 
*suspect8e et aliae inhonestse,' pass through their choir and 
cloister in the dark and to see that the doors of their church 
between the nave and the choir, and the gates of their cloister 
opening into the fields, be constantly kept shut until their first 
choir-service is over in the morning, at dinner time, and when 
they meet at their evening collation.* 
Item 6th mentions that several of the canons are found to be 
very ignorant and illiterate, and enjoins the prior to see that they 
be better instructed by a proper master. 
Item 8th. The canons are here accused of refusing to accept 
of their statutable clothing year by year, and of demanding a 
certain specified sum of money, as if it were their annual rent 
and due. This the bishop forbids, and orders that the canons 
shall be clothed out of the revenue of the Priory, and the old 
garments be laid by in a chamber and given to the poor, accord- 
ing to the rule of Saint Augustine. 
In Item 9th is a complaint that some of the canons are given 
to wander out of the precincts of the convent without leave ; and 
that others ride to their manors and farms, under pretence of in- 
specting the concerns of the society, when they please, and stay 
as long as they please. But they are enjoined never to stir either 
about their own private concerns or the business of the convent 
without leave from the prior : and no canon is to go alone, but 
to have a grave brother to accompany him. 
The injunction in Item 10th, at this distance of time, appears 
rather ludicrous ; but the visitor seems to be very serious on the 
occasion, and says that it has been evidently proved to him that 
some of the canons, living dissolutely after the flesh, and not 
after the spirit, sleep naked in their beds without their breeches 
and shirts, " absque femoralibus et camisiis."t He enjoins that 
these culprits shall be punished by severe fasting, especially 
if they shall be found to be faulty a third time ; and threatens 
* A Collation was a meal or repast on a fast day in lieu of a supper. 
t The rule alluded to in Itbm 10th, of not sleeping naked, was enjoined the Knights Tem- 
plars, who also were subject to the rules of Saint Augustine.— See Gurtleri Hist. Templarionim. 
