CHAPTER XI
RICHMOND TOWN AND PARK, WITH PETERSHAM,
HAM HOUSE, AND KINGSTON
In addition to the many interesting historic memories connected with its palace, Richmond has associations with a number of important religious houses, of which, unfortunately, no actual trace now remains, though their names are preserved in those of certain modern roads.
Henry V., soon after his accession, founded in the Old Deer Park, near the site of the present Observatory of Kew, a Carthusian monastery, which he called the House of Jesus of Bethlehem, one of several endowed by him in expiation for his father's usurpation of the throne, which may possibly have been in Shakespeare's mind when in his Henry V. he made that monarch say, 'And I have built two chantries where the sad and solemn priests still pray for Richard's soul.'
The monastery of Jesus of Bethlehem seems to have been a very imposing group of buildings, covering several acres of ground, round about which soon gathered a considerable hamlet that was known as West Sheen. In the chapel connected with it continual prayers were offered up day and night for the soul of King Richard, and within its precincts was a hermitage called the Anchorites' cell, where dwelt the chaplain, whose stipend was fixed at twenty marks a year. The new community quickly gained a great reputation for sanctity, and its priors were all men chosen on account of their exceptional holiness, amongst whom the last, Henry Man, who died in 1536, was specially noted for his earnest faith, or what would at the present day be considered his credulity, for he firmly believed in the divine mission of the Holy Maid of Kent, who had during his term of office a great following of converts, and paid by her terrible death at Tyburn for her boldness in predicting the punishment of the king for his divorce of Katharine of Aragon.
Sheen Monastery
To Sheen Monastery came Edward IV. and his wife Elizabeth in 1472, to take part in what was called the 'Great Pardon,' a special dispensation granted to all who had contributed to the expense of restoring the buildings, and to it some thirty years later fled Perkin Warbeck in the vain hope of obtaining sanctuary, for he was dragged from his refuge by the king's emissaries, by whom he was taken to London to be set in the stocks, first at Westminster and at Cheapside, before he was sent to the Tower, where his fellow-conspirator, the young Earl of Warwick, was already imprisoned.
It was at Sheen that the education of the future Cardinal Pole was begun, he having been sent there at the early age of seven. He remained under the care of the monks for five years, and returned to them in 1525 for two years of prayerful seclusion before the beginning of his long struggle with Thomas Cromwell over the question of the king's divorce. The memory of the saintly Dean Colet is also inseparably connected with the House of Jesus of Bethlehem, for some little time after his foundation of St. Paul's School, he built for himself a house on land acquired from the brethren, to which he withdrew when he felt his end approaching, passing peacefully away in it in 1519.