Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Still sing for Richard’s soul.”
Royally endowed, and pleasantly situated, the monastery of Sheen is not without its place in history. The Prior of Sheen was powerful enough to avert for a time, by his intercession, the due penalty of death from the pretender Perkin Warbeck, who escaped from the Tower and sought refuge within the walls of the monastery. But a second attempt to break prison brought him to the scaffold. To Sheen the body of James IV. of Scotland was brought from the field of Flodden for burial, a purpose which seems to have been unfulfilled, for the corpse, wrapt in lead, was seen lying in a lumber-room some years after the suppression of the monastery. Hard by its walls the noted Dean Colet, founder of St. Paul’s School, built himself a small house, to which, for a time, the great Cardinal Wolsey retreated after his disgrace. After the suppression of the monastery its buildings became the possession of more than one noble family in succession. According to Spelman, a curse was upon it, for in less than a century and a half it went to nine owners, never once descending from father to son. It witnessed the marriage of Sir Robert Dudley and Amy Robsart, and the childhood of Lady Jane Grey. In the reign of Mary the monks came back for a brief season, but they had again to cross the seas when Elizabeth reigned. After many changes, demolitions, and additions, a part of the monastery, or a residence upon a portion of its site, was occupied by Sir William Temple, the well-known statesman, and its gardens became the scene of his experiments to discover “how a succession of cherries may be compassed from May to Michaelmas, and how the riches of Sheen vines may be improved by half-a-dozen sorts which are not known here.”
THE RIVER AT KEW.
Evelyn, who incidentally notices that the abbey precincts had become divided between “several pretty villas and fine gardens of the most excellent fruits,” remarks on the excellence of Sir W. Temple’s orangery, and the perfect training of the wall-fruit trees in his garden. Here the retired statesman, away from the hurly-burly of politics, meditated on horticulture and indited epistles, while King James was vainly grasping at a tyranny, and the Prince of Orange was marching eastward from Torbay. When that prince became king he visited Temple at Sheen, but after this time the latter chiefly resided at Moor Park; so that it is with this place rather than Sheen that the memory of his young secretary, afterwards the noted Dean of St. Patrick, is associated. All traces of the ancient monastery have now disappeared, the last remains having been destroyed about the year 1769.
The “Kew Observatory,” which we have already noticed, stands isolated among the broad meadows, away from dust and noise, and from the reverberation of traffic. It was built for George III. by Sir William Chambers, “for the purpose of studying astronomical science with special reference to the transit of Venus.” But after a time its activity declined, and for many years “Kew may be said to have quietly glided into a long winter of hibernation, being under the careful guardianship of a curator and reader.” Attention was once directed towards it in a painful way, a double murder having been committed by the janitor, a man named Little, previously much respected in the neighbourhood, who was arrested in the house of his victims and duly executed in the year 1795. The observatory was suppressed by Sir Robert Peel, and the building offered to the Royal Society. That body, however, refused to undertake the charge, as it did not possess any funds applicable for the purpose, but by means of the subscriptions of various men of science, and a grant from the British Association, an observatory for meteorological and electrical observations was established under the charge of a committee, at which much important work was done. In the year 1871 the grant of the British Association was withdrawn, and a sum of £10,000 was placed in the hands of the Royal Society by Mr. Gassiot, for the maintenance of magnetic observations at Kew. It is now under the charge of a committee termed the Meteorological Council, and is the central establishment for observations relating to meteorology. Here instruments relating to this science are tested and marked, and a large amount of most valuable work is executed.
After the little town of Isleworth—which lies on a concave bend of the river, under the lee of some low islands—has been passed, the Thames is bordered on either side by a park, and, for the last time on its course to London, almost shakes itself free of the grasp of the builder. On the one hand the Royal Gardens at Kew succeed to the Old Deer Park; on the other lies the ample domain of the Duke of Northumberland, whose large but ugly house becomes a conspicuous—a too conspicuous—feature in the landscape. We may turn aside for a moment from the property of the Crown to notice that of the house of Percy, once hardly less potent. Sion House, which is separated from the river by a level expanse of meadow, interrupted only by one low mound, which supports some fine old cedars, occupies the site of the second chantry founded by Henry V., as a peace-offering for the sins of his father. The dedication-stone was laid by the king in the year 1416. It was a convent for both sexes, though the nuns predominated, these being sixty in number, while the brethren were only twenty-five. But they were entirely separated, a thick screen dividing them even in the chapel, where, indeed, both sexes were seldom present at the same time, so that all occasion of scandal was carefully avoided. The convent was endowed with the manor of Isleworth, and at a later time received many grants of property which had belonged to the alien priories. Finding the original buildings too small, the society obtained licence to raise themselves a new convent, on the site now occupied by the Duke’s mansion, which is rather to the east of that on which the king built. Life glided by smoothly and uneventfully for the inmates; they became rich, and lived easily, but harmlessly, until the crash of the Reformation came. For some reason or other they had incurred the special displeasure of the king, and were accused of harbouring his enemies, and being in collusion with the Holy Maid of Kent. One of the monks, together with the Vicar of Isleworth, was executed at Tyburn. The lands were distributed, but the house and the adjoining property were retained by the Crown, the nuns retreating to Flanders. For a brief space, indeed, in the reign of Queen Mary, they returned to their old home, but on her death again became exiles. The society still continued to exist, though for a while its members suffered great poverty; but at last they settled “in a new Sion on the banks of the Tagus, at Lisbon, in the year 1594. Here they still remain, after the lapse of nearly three centuries, restricting their membership entirely to English sisters, and still retaining the keys of their old home, in the hope, never yet abandoned by them, of eventually returning to it.” It is said that some half century or more ago, when they were visited at Lisbon by the then Duke of Northumberland, they told his Grace the story of having carried their keys with them through all their changes of fortune and abode, and that they were still in hopes of seeing their English home again. “But,” quietly remarked his Grace, “the locks have been altered since those keys were in use”—a reply which, whether intended or not, had much significance in it. There are many good people in the world who cling tenaciously to the keys which were fabricated by the worthies of olden time, forgetful that the locks have been altered, so that their binding and loosing power is gone.