their mandate, “quasdam monicionem et protestacionem in scriptis redactas fecit, legit, interposuit”—that all persons disqualified, or not having right to be present, should immediately withdraw, and protesting against their voting, etc.; that then having read the constitution of the general council “Quia propter,” and explained the modes of proceeding to election, they agreed unanimously to proceed “per viam seu formam simplicis compromissi;” when John Wynchestre, sub-prior, and all the others (the commissaries undernamed excepted) named and chose brothers Richard Elstede, Thomas Halyborne, John Lemyngton, the sacrist, John Stepe, chantor, and Richard Putworth, canons, to be commissaries, who were sworn each to nominate and elect a fit person to be prior, and empowered by letters patent under the common seal, to be in force only until the darkness of the night of the same day; that they, or the greater part of them, should elect for the whole convent, within the limited time from their own number, or from the rest of the convent; that one of them should publish their consent in common before the clergy and people: they then all promised to receive as prior the person these five canons should fix on. These commissaries seceded from the chapter-house to the refectory of the Priory, and were shut in with Master John Penkester, bachelor of laws, and John Couke and John Lynne, perpetual vicars of the parish churches of Newton and Selborne, and with Sampson Maycock, a public notary, where they treated of the election; when they unanimously agreed on John Wynchestre, and appointed Thomas Halyborne to choose him in common for all, and to publish the election as customary, and returned long before it was dark to the chapter-house, where Thomas Halyborne read publicly the instrument of election; when all the brothers, the new prior excepted, singing solemnly the hymn “Te Deum laudamus,” fecerunt deportari novum electum, by some of the brothers from the chapter-house to the high altar of the church; * and the hymn being sung, dictisque versiculo et oratione consuetis in
- It seems here as if the canons used to chair their new elected prior from the chapter-house to the high altar of their Convent Church. In Letter XXI., on the same occasion it is said—et sic canentes dictum electum ad majus altare ecclesie deduximus, ut apud nos moris est.
