Short answers, pulled from the story.
King Henry V personally laid the first stone of Syon Abbey on the 22nd of February 1415. The first charter for the institution was signed on the 3rd of March 1415, officially naming it The Monastery of St Saviour and St Bridget of Syon.
The first nuns arrived from Vadstena Abbey in Sweden led by Abbess Gerdeka Hartlevsdotter. The group included Anna Karlsdotter, Christina Finwitsdotter, Christina Esbjörnsdotter, and Anna Esbjörnsdotter.
Richard Reynolds was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn on the 4th of May 1535 for denying the king's supremacy. He was later canonized by Rome as a martyr for his role in opposing Henry VIII's religious reforms.
The expelled nuns of Syon Abbey exiled themselves to the Netherlands and eventually settled in Lisbon, Portugal, where they arrived in 1594. The community returned to England in 1861, settling first in Spetisbury, Dorset, and later moving to Chudleigh, Devon.
The original community consisted of sixty women and twenty-five men living under the strict rule of St. Bridget of Sweden. The women included one abbess and fifty-nine nuns, while the men comprised one confessor general, twelve priests, four deacons, and eight lay brethren.
Syon Abbey was closed and sold in 2011 when the community was reduced to three elderly sisters. The remaining sisters now live in Plymouth, while the remaining medieval books from the collection were deposited with the University of Exeter Library in 2004.