In order to augment the library it has been also proposed, that every author be desired to give one copy of every book he publishes; and also every minister at his admission into a living, that every governor at his admission give one of at least 10s. value; and that the booksellers give one copy of every book they cause to be printed.
The library is surveyed twice a year: and had at first a librarian, an under librarian, and an ostiary: but now one serves for all.
The almshouse consists of twenty rooms, for ten men within the college, and ten women without it. Four of whom are nominated by the city of Bristol, where Mr. White was born; eight by the merchant taylor’s company, six by the parish of St. Dunstan, where he was minister forty-nine years; and two by St. Gregory’s parish, where he had lived about twenty years: except any of the kindred of either of his wives appeared, who were first to be considered; but these were not to exceed four at a time. The alms-people formerly received 6l. a year; but the lowering of rents has caused their allowance to be somewhat lessened.
Sion court, Philip lane, London wall.
Sion House, one of the seats of the right Honourable the Earl and Countess of Northumberland, stands upon the banks of the Thames, between Brentford and Isleworth in Middlesex, and opposite to the King’s Garden at Richmond. It is called Sion from a monastery of the same name, which was founded by Henry the Vth. in 1414, very near the place where the house now stands, and was endowed with 1000 marks a year, for the maintenance of sixty Nuns (including the Abbess and twenty-five men), and was dedicated to St. Saviour and St. Bridget; from the latter of whom the Nuns, &c. were called Bridgettines, and were of the order of Augustines, as reformed by some new regulations made by the aforesaid Bridget.
Sion was almost one of the first of the monasteries that was suppressed by Henry the VIIIth, perhaps not on account of any greater irregularities of behaviour, which had been discovered in it by the visitors, but because the members of that society had been remarkably favourable to the King’s declared enemies, and particularly to the maid of Kent; for she met with a very friendly reception amongst them, and so far excited the curiosity of the neighbourhood, as to induce the famous Sir Thomas More to have two private conferences with her at this very place. When the monastery was suppressed, its revenues according to Speed, amounted to 1944l. 11s. 11d. ¾, and on account of its fine situation, it was not sold or given immediately to any court-favourite, but appropriated to the King’s own use. And accordingly we find, that when the corpse of Henry the VIIIth. was to be removed from Westminster to Windsor to be interred, it laid the first night, not at Richmond as is commonly supposed, but at Sion; which by this means became the scene in which a prophecy was supposed to be fulfilled. For Father Peto, preaching before the King at Greenwich in 1534, told him that the dogs would lick his blood as they had done Ahab’s. Now as the King died of a dropsical disorder, and had been dead a fortnight before he was removed to Sion, it so happened that some corrupted matter of a bloody colour ran through the coffin at that place. Whereupon the incident, though only a natural consequence of the aforesaid circumstances, was misconstrued into a completion of Peto’s pretended prophecy, and considered as a piece of divine justice, inflicted upon the King for having forced the Bridgettines from their religious sanctuary.
S. Wale delin. Elliot sculp.
Sion House, view’d from Richmond Gardens.
In the next reign the monastery was given by the King to his uncle the Duke of Somerset the Protector, who in 1547 (as is generally supposed) began to build Sion House, and finished the shell of it, as it now remains, excepting a few alterations, which will be mentioned in their proper places. The house is built on the very spot where the church belonging to the monastery formerly stood, and is a very large, venerable, and majestic structure, built of white stone, in the form of a hollow square, so that it has four external, and as many internal fronts; the latter of which surround a square court in the middle. The roof is flat, covered with lead, and surrounded with indented battlements, like the walls of a fortified city. Upon every one of the four outward angles of the roof, there is a square turret, flat-roofed, and embattled like the other parts of the building. The house is three stories high, and the east-front, which faces the Thames, is supported by arches, forming a fine piazza, as it appears in the print. The gardens formed two square areas, enclosed with high walls before the east and west fronts, and were laid out and finished in a very grand manner, but being made at a time when extensive views were judged to be inconsistent with that solemn reserve and stately privacy affected by the great, they were so situated as to deprive the house of every beautiful prospect which the neighbourhood afforded. None of them at least could be seen from the lower apartments. To remedy in some measure that inconvenience, the Protector built a very high triangular terrace in the angle between the walls of the two gardens; and this it was that his enemies afterwards did not scruple to call a fortification, and to insinuate that it was one proof, amongst many others, which they alledged of his having formed a design very dangerous to the liberties of the King and people. Such was the State of the gardens as finished by the Protector. After his attainder and execution on Jan. 22, 1552, Sion was confiscated to the crown. Whereupon the furniture of the apartments, in which the Duke had lived (and they were probably a part of the old monastery) were given to Sir John Wroth the Keeper, and the new house, that is, the present house at Sion, to the Duke of Northumberland, which then became the residence of his son the Lord Guilford and his daughter-in-law the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey. The Duke being beheaded August 22, 1553, Sion house once more reverted to the crown. Three years after this, Queen Mary restored it to the Bridgettines; and it remained in their possession until the society was expelled by Queen Elizabeth in the first year of her reign. Such of the Nuns as persisted in their errors carried away their portable treasure, and settled successively at Zurickzee in Zealand, at Mechlin, Roan, and lastly at Lisbon, where the society still subsists. Some years after this second dissolution, which Sion had undergone as a monastery, it was granted by a lease of a long term to Henry Earl of Northumberland, who, in consideration of his eminent services to the government, was permitted to enjoy it by paying a very small rent as an acknowledgement, and even that, when offered, was generally remitted.
King James the First considered his lordship no longer as a tenant, but gave Sion to him and his heirs for ever. Many improvements were made in his time; for it appears from one of his lordship’s letters to the King in 1613, that he had laid out 9000l. in the house and gardens; which sum was probably expended in finishing them according to the Protector’s plan. His son Algernon, afterwards appointed Lord high Admiral of England, succeeded to the estate in November 1632. He employed Inigo Jones to new face the inner court, to make many alterations in the apartments, and to finish the great hall in the manner in which it at present appears.