Thomas Betson, a man of wide interests, was Rector of All Saints, Wimbish Essex from 1466, before moving to Syon as a Deacon and the Librarian from 1481 till his death there in 1517. His library catalogue and a notebook of his still exist.
Syon Abbey was founded by Henry V: one of three holy sites at Richmond beside the river: Syon Abbey, a Bridgettine monastery based on that at Vadstena, Sweden; the Carthusian Charterhouse of Shene; and the Celestines, a French order, who may also have been based in the present Syon Park. There may have been a number of reasons why Henry V founded the three monasteries: his father Henry IV’s wish to establish a Brigittine monastery in England, his father’s involvement in the murder of Richard II, plus another possible motivation: as Prince of Wales in 1403, at the age of 16, the young Henry was assisting his father at the Battle of Shrewsbury against the Percys, when an arrow pierced young Henry’s cheek and lodged inside the back of his skull. The shaft was broken off but the arrowhead remained inside. An eminent surgeon, John Bradmore, was called in and he first treated the wound with known antiseptics such as honey. He kept the wound open with dried elder pith (also antiseptic) bound in linen to the length of the wound. He had special tongs incorporating a screw made by a blacksmith, inserted this into the hole and withdrew the arrowhead. (There is an excellent video on You Tube which re-enacts this procedure.) The Prince survived, but with a disfigured face – he is always shown afterward in profile. As Henry V he went on to his most famous feat, the Battle of Agincourt, 1415 – which was in fact followed by 4-5 years of negotiations with the French, and Henry’s marriage to the French king’s daughter Katherine de Valois. St Brigitt in her lifetime (1303-73) had in fact suggested peace between the French and English could be achieved through such a marriage.

Syon Abbey was a double house of both nuns and monks (60 sisters, 13 (male) priests, 4 deacons, 8 servitors). During the Birkbeck excavations between 2004 and 2012 burial vaults were found inside the church at Syon Abbey under the original level of the church floor. A few skeletons were found in them, but it was not known who they were.

A group of people who had been involved in the Birkbeck excavations which took place on the Abbey site behind Syon House formed a group called the Syon Abbey Research Associates to delve further into the historic background to the Abbey. The Research Group obtained information from the Syon Martiloge (now lodged at the British Library), which had been kept up by Betson: a manuscript document in Latin, it is in two parts: the first consists of a list of saints’ days; the second half includes dates of deaths at the Abbey, including names, listed as e.g.: “Burials of the Sisters”, and those of brothers, 40 sisters and 25 brothers. The list starts in 1485, and ends in 1539 (when the Abbey was dissolved). It includes Betson’s own name. John Adams has made a schematic diagram of who they were and where they might have been buried. On both sides of the church the vaults were in pairs running inside the walls (the brothers against the South wall), so burials were said to be “against the wall” or “against the grill”. Several deaths in 1488 may have been due to a known outbreak of sleeping sickness. Some burials have actually been identified, but this task would be made easier if it was known from which end the burials started, for instance did the sisters’ burials start at the Mary altar? So it is unclear exactly in which vault Betson was buried. Syon Abbey church was probably based on the design of the original Brigittine church at Vadstena, Sweden. To make it fireproof, a large amount of metal was imported from Sweden. The nuns and monks were kept separate at services: the nuns used an upper balcony and the monks were on the floor of the church – probably neither group was allowed to look at the other.

Syon Abbey seems to have been a progressive institution: preaching was carried out in English and the place was known for its scholarship. If you wanted a book, you might well find it in Syon’s library, which contained both manuscript and printed books [could there have been a printing press at Syon?], some of them copies of books going back hundreds of years: a surviving illustration of a blackberry plant has been recognised as being a copy of one from the 400s AD. The only medical books in English were at Syon. The Research Group found documents in the British Library including the Syon Martiloge and Betson’s catalogue of the books. Betson’s notebook (containing a herbal) was transcribed by John and Stuart at St Johns College, Cambridge.

Jennifer Hunt