8 - Syon Abbey Preserved: Some Historians of Syon

Summary

Early Accounts

The 25th daie of November the howse of Sion was suppressed into the Kinges handes, and the ladies and brethren putt out, which was the vertues howse of religion that was in England, …

This, by now familiar, entry for 1539 from Charles Wriothesley's A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, apparently announcing the end of a great religious house, is actually one of the earliest in a series of ‘historical’ glimpses of Syon Abbey. The centuries of Syon's continuing existence have not passed uneventfully, and over the years interested men and women, both inside and outside of the Order, have, with various ends in mind, taken up the task of recording its story. A number of these histories, either originating within the Syon Abbey community or kept there, have recently been passed on to the custody of the University of Exeter, and to mark the transfer of the documents and manuscripts, it is perhaps pertinent to consider the authors of such histories and what aspects of Syon they ‘preserve’.

Before Wriothesley's Chronicle, there are references to and some accounts of Syon indicating that from the early years of its foundation the abbey had acquired a reputation for strict observance and especially efficacious prayers. Two of these merit special mention because they indicate that from its foundation Syon's reputation for sanctity and spiritual power was widely known. The first is the ‘Salutacio Sancte Brigitte’, a poem seeking the intercession of St Bridget, and composed by the Augustinian canon, John Awdelay, some time between 1422 and 1426 at around the time that Syon became an enclosed, functioning monastery. Of particular interest is his detailed knowledge of Syon Abbey, or ‘Bregitsion’, as he calls it throughout the 207-line poem. He knows its precise location, ‘Beside þe Chene, soþly, seuen myle fro Lundun’ (136) and is very much aware of the ‘precious prayoure’ (183) of that ‘spiritual plas’ (181) whose members ‘han þat pouere’ (185) to ‘purches here our grace’ (183).