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