culprits shall be punished by severe fasting, especially if they shall be found to be faulty a third time; and threatens the prior and sub-prior with suspension if they do not correct this enormity.
In Item 11th the good bishop is very wroth with some of the canons, whom he finds to be professed hunters and sportsmen, keeping hounds, and publicly attending hunting-matches. These pursuits, he says, occasion much dissipation, danger to the soul and body, and frequent expense; he, therefore, wishing to extirpate this vice wholly from the convent, "radicibus extirpare" does absolutely enjoin the canons never intentionally to be present at any public noisy tumultuous huntings; or to keep any hounds, by themselves or by others, openly or by stealth, within the convent, or without.*
In Item 12th he forbids the canons in office to make their business a plea for not attending the service of the choir; since by these means either divine worship is neglected or their brother canons are over-burdened.
By Item 14th we are informed that the original number of canons at the Priory of Selborne was fourteen; but that at this visitation they were found to be let down to eleven. The visitor therefore strongly and earnestly enjoins them that, with all due speed and diligence, they should proceed to the election of proper persons to fill up the vacancies, under pain of the greater excommunication.
In Item 17th the prior and canons are accused of suffering, through neglect, notorious dilapidations to take place among their manorial houses and tenements, and in the walls and inclosures of the convent itself, to the shame and scandal of the institution; they are therefore enjoined, under pain of suspension, to repair all defects within the space of six months.
* Considering the strong propensity in human nature towards the pleasures of the chase, it is not to be wondered that the canons of Canterbury should languish after hunting, when from their situation so near the precincts of Wolmer Forest, the king’s hounds must have been often in hearing, and sometimes in sight from their windows. If the bishop was so offended at these sporting canons, what would he have said to our modern fox-hunting divines
