debitam investigationem, &c., invenit.” So that he despaired with all his care: "statum ejusdem reparare vel restaurare:; et considerata temporis malicia, et preteritis timendo et conjecturando futura, de aliqua bona et sancta religione ejusdem ordinis, &c., juxta piam intentionem primevi fundatoris ibidem habend. desperatur.”
William Wainfleet, Bishop of Winchester, founded his college of Saint Mary Magdalene, in the University of Oxford, in or about the year 1459; but the revenues proving insufficient for so large and noble an establishment, the college supplicated the founder to augment its income by putting it in possession of the estates belonging to the Priory of Selborne, now become a deserted convent, without canons or prior. The president and fellows state the circumstances of their numerous institutions and scanty provision, and the ruinous and perverted condition of the Priory. The bishop appoints commissaries to inquire into the state of the said monastery; and, if found expedient, to confirm the appropriation of it to the college, which soon after appoints attorneys to take possession, September 24th, 1484. But the way to give the reader a thorough insight respecting this transaction, will be to transcribe a farther proportion of the process of the impropriation, from the beginning, which will lay open the manner of proceeding, and show the consent of the parties.
Impropriatio Selborne, 1485.
"Universis sancte matris ecclesie filiis, &c. Ricardus Dei gratia prior ecclesie conventualis de Novo Loco, &c.,* ad universitatem vestre notitie deducimus, &c., quod coram nobis commissario predicto in ecclesia parochiali Sit Georgii de Esher
* Ecclesia Conventualis de Novo Loco was the monastery afterwards called the New Minster, or Abbey of Hyde, in the city of Winchester. Should any intelligent reader wonder to see that the prior of Hyde Abbey was commissary to the Bishop of Winton, and should conclude that there was a mistake in titles, and that the abbot must have been here meant; he will be pleased to recollect that this person was the second in rank; for, next under the abbot, in every abbey, was the prior.”—Pref. to Notit. Monast.,^. 29. Besides, abbots were great personages, and too high in station to submit to any office under the bishop.
