Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/381

Rh pension of ten marks, from the revenue of the priory, to be paid by the hands of the prior quarterly.

The Bishop decrees farther, that John Sharp, and his successors, shall take an oath to observe this injunction, and that before their installation.

“Lecta et facta sunt hæc in quodam alto oratorio,” belonging to the bishop at Suthwaltham, May 25th, 1478, in the presence of John Sharp, who gave his assent, and then took the oath before witnesses, with the other oaths before the chancellor, who decreed he should be inducted and installed, as was done that same day.

How John Sharp, alias Glastonbury, acquitted himself in his priorship, and in what manner he made a vacancy, whether by resignation, or death, or whether he was removed by the visitor, does not appear; we only find that some time in the year 1484 there was no prior, and that the bishop nominated Canon Ashford to fill the vacancy.

T Thomas Ashford was most undoubtedly the last prior of Selborne; and, therefore, here will be the proper place to say something concerning a list of the priors, and to endeavour to improve that already given by others.

At the end of Bishop Tanner’s “Notitia Monastica,” the folio edition, among Brown Willis’s “Principals of Religious Houses,” occur the names of eleven of the priors of Selborne, with dates. But this list is imperfect, and particularly at the beginning; for though the priory was founded in 1232, yet it commences with Nich. de Cantia, elected in 1262, so that, for the first thirty years, no prior is mentioned; yet there must have been one or more. We were in hopes that the register of Peter de Rupibus would have rectified this omission; but, when it was examined, no information of the sort was to be found. From the year 1410 the