LETTER XV.
Though Bishop Wykeham appears somewhat stern and rigid in his visitatorial character towards the Priory of Selborne, yet he was on the whole a liberal friend and benefactor to that convent, which, like every society or individual that fell in his way, partook of the generosity and benevolence of that munificent prelate.
“In the year 1377 William of Wykeham, out of his mere good will and liberality, discharged the whole debts of the prior and convent of Selborne, to the amount of one hundred and ten marks eleven shillings and sixpence;* and, a few years before he died, he made a free gift of one hundred marks to the same priory: on which account the prior and convent voluntarily engaged for the celebration of two masses a day by two canons of the convent for ten years, for the bishop’s welfare, if he should live so long; and for his soul if he should die before the expiration of this term.”†
At this distance of time it seems matter of great wonder to us how these societies, so nobly endowed, and whose members were exempt by their very institution from every means of personal and family expense, could possibly run in debt without squandering their revenues in a manner incompatible with their function.
Religious houses might sometimes be distressed in their revenues by fires among their buildings or large dilapidations from storms, etc.; but no such accident appears to have befallen the priory at Selborne. Those situate on public roads, or in great towns where there were shrines of saints, were liable to be intruded on by travellers, devotees, and pilgrims; and were subject to the importunity of the poor, who swarmed at their gates to partake of doles and broken victuals. Of these disadvantages some convents used to complain, and especially those at Canterbury; but this priory, from its sequestered situation, could seldom be subject to either of these inconveniences, and therefore we
* Yet in ten years’ time we find, by the “Notabilis Visitatio,” that all their relics, plate, vestments, title-deeds, etc., were in pawn.
† Lowth’s Life of Wykeham.
