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 1944_l._ 11_s._ 11_d._ 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. [Illustration: _S. Wale delin._ _Elliot sculp._ _Sion House, view’d from Richmond Gardens._]