GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



in liquidation of the fine, all his other estates being entailed, was 

 refused ; but he was ultimately released on payment of 11,000. 



The tenth Earl repaired the buildings, and it is possible that 

 Inigo Jones may have been the architect employed ; if this was the 

 case he did not materially alter the structure, and the cloister on the 

 east front alone suggests his work. The House of Commons in 

 1646 made the Earl of Northumberland the guardian of the children 

 of Charles I., and it was from Sion that they were taken to St. 

 James's Palace for an affecting farewell interview with their 

 unfortunate father before his execution. 



Charles II. sought refuge here when the plague was raging in 

 London a doubtful asylum, since Brentford, at its very gates, 

 seems to have been the reverse of immune ; for in August, 1665, 

 Mr. Pepys mentions in his " Diary " that " the plague was very bad 

 round Brentford." A month later he writes that one of his water- 

 men "fell sick as soon as he landed me in London, when I had been 

 all night upon the water, and I believe he did get his infection that 

 day at Brentford, and is now dead of the plague." 



Under date a month earlier, John Evelyn makes the following 

 entry : 



' To London and so to Syon, where his Majesty sat at Council 

 during the Contagion (Great Plague). When business was over, I 

 viewed that seat, belonging to the Earle of Northumberland, built 

 out of an old Nunnerie of stone, and faire enough, but more cele- 

 brated for its garden than it deserves ; yet there is excellent wall 

 fruite, and a pretty fountaine ; nothing else extraordinary." 



When the Lady Elizabeth Percy, neiress to all of the Percy 

 estates, who had already been twice a widow, wedded the Duke 

 of Somerset before she was sixteen years old, she carried Sion again 

 into the Somerset family, but it only remained during two genera- 

 tions in the possession of the Seymours ; for Lady Elizabeth's 

 grand-daughter, who was also an heiress, married Sir Hugh Smith- 

 son, belonging to an old family in the north of England. He had 

 already Percy blood in his veins, and he was afterwards created 

 first Duke of Northumberland in the present line. 



It was this nobleman who employed Adam to carry out the 

 extensive alterations in the interior at Sion House, and projected 

 external work, that, owing to unexplained circumstances, was 

 never executed. This is scarcely to be regretted, because the 



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