CHAPTER IV 

 SIGN 



IT seems to have been usual in England in the days of our 

 Plantagenet and Lancastrian kings, for each one, on his 

 accession, to found monasteries and convents for the repose 

 of his soul, and of the souls of his predecessors. 



Henry V., who perhaps did not read his own title very clear, 

 conscious of his follies in the past, began his reign by turning over 

 a new leaf, and he followed the custom above mentioned, when 

 he founded the religious house, or houses, of Sion in Middlesex. 

 Shakespeare makes him say : 



" and I have built 



Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests 

 Sing still for Richard's soul." 



One of these was for monks, the other for nuns, of the order of 

 St. Bridget, a Swedish offshoot of the Augustines. 



The charter of the monastery, signed by the King, ran thus : 

 44 To celebrate divine service for ever, for our estate while we live, 

 and for our soul when we shall have departed this life, and for 

 the souls of our most dear lord and father Henry, late King of 

 England, and Mary, his late wife, our most dear mother ; also for 

 the souls of John, late duke of Lancaster, our Grandfather ; and 

 of Blanche, his late wife, and of other of our progenitors, and of 

 all the faithfull departed." 



The " Monastery of St. Saviour and St. Bridget," as it was 

 called, consisted of eighty-five 4C Religious," the number com- 

 memorating the seventy- two disciples and thirteen apostles. There 



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