Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/401

Rh and grange are leasehold under Magdalen College, for twenty-one years, renewable every seven; all the smaller estates in and round the village are copyhold 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 neighbouring 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 inhabitants.

B 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,