CHAPTER IV 
SION 
T 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 : 
oe eas SS 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: 
“*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 “ Religious,” the number com- 
memorating the seventy-two disciples and thirteen apostles. There 
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