As report has it, the king was much disquieted in his conscience as to the mode in which his father had gained the crown by the deposition and death of Richard II., and as a peace-offering founded, in the year 1414, the Convent of Sheen and the Nunnery of Sion, on the opposite side of the Thames. It was incorporated under the name of the House of Jesus at Sheen, and the rules ordered that when the devotions at the one convent ceased those at the other should begin. These foundations are recorded in the speech assigned by Shakespeare to Henry prior to the Battle of Agincourt:-- "I have built 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." [Illustration: THE RIVER AT KEW.]