Agnes Jordan

[1] It was she who had to sign the deed of surrender on 25 November 1539 which brought to an abrupt end the life of the abbey and granted all its property and wealth to Henry VIII.

The exact birth year of Agnes Jordan is unknown, but it is known that she had a sister, Isabel Jordayne, who also became a nun and abbess at Wilton Abbey.

Having assented to the Act of Supremacy in 1534, Jordan and the nuns at Syon were visited by two commissions of enquiry in the following year, looking at the wealth and morality of the abbey.

When the dissolution process began in 1536, as one of the larger abbeys, Syon was not immediately affected, but there was some impact as the abbess took in the prioress and two nuns displaced from a small Benedictine house in Somerset.

[6] The tombstone read:[7] Of your charitie pray for the soul of Dame Agnes Jordan, sometime Abbess of the monastery of Sion, which departed this life the 29th day of January in the year of our Lord God 1545.