The second of the religious bodies regarded by the black monks of Wolsey's day as examples of rigid observance was that of the Bridgettines, represented in England by a single house, Syon abbey on Thames-side, between the villages of Isleworth and Brentford. The community, as has been noted in an earlier volume, had been in existence for little more than a century when Cardinal Wolsey died. It was extremely wealthy, with a net income, far exceeding that of any other nunnery, of £1735, which gave it the tenth place in order of revenue among all the religious houses of the kingdom. The large numbers had been maintained, and the vocation continued to attract recruits from the first families of the land. The house was distinguished not only by its good observance, but by its informed devotional life, based largely upon the spiritual writers of the late medieval period, including the English mystical writers of the fourteenth century; it possessed a magnificent library, particularly rich in modern religious works, and the brethren were in close contact with the Carthusians across the river at Sheen, and with those of the House of the Salutation in London. The community was by statute made up of sixty nuns (including a small number of lay sisters) and twenty-five religious brethren (of whom seventeen were in holy orders), and in the early sixteenth century it fell little short of this total. In the lists which survive from 1518 and 1539 many well-known family names appear among the nuns.