As soon as the president and fellows of Magdalen College had obtained the decision of the commissary in their favour, they proceeded to supplicate the Pope, and to entreat His Holiness that he would give his sanction to the sentence of union. Some difficulties were started at Rome; but they were surmounted by the college agent, as appears by his letters from that city. At length Pope Innocent VIII., by a bull* bearing date 8th June, in the year of our Lord 1486, and in the second year of his pontificate, confirmed what had been done, and suppressed the convent.
Thus fell the considerable and well-endowed priory of Selborne after it had subsisted about two hundred and fifty-four years; about seventy-four years after the suppression of priories alien by Henry V., and about fifty years before the general dissolution of monasteries by Henry VIII. The founder, it is probable, had fondly imagined that the sacredness of the institution, and the pious motives on which it was established, might have preserved it inviolate to the end of time—yet it fell—
“To teach us that God attributes to place
No sanctity, if none be thither brought
By men, who there frequent, or therein dwell.”
LETTER XXV.
Wainfleet did not long enjoy the satisfaction arising from this new acquisition; but departed this life in a few months after he had effected the union of the priory with his late founded college; and was succeeded in the see of Winchester, by Peter Courtney, some time towards the end of the year 1486.
* There is nothing remarkable in this bull of Pope Innocent, except the statement of the annual revenue of the Priory of Selborne, which is therein estimated at 160 flor. auri; whereas Bishop Godwin sets it at £337 15s. 6¼d. Now a floren, so named, says Camden, because made by Florentius, was a gold coin of King Edward III., in value 6s., whereof 160 is not one-seventh part of £337 15s. 6¼d.
