The Bridgettine community at Syon Abbey in England was founded in 1415 by King Henry V as part of a program of religious reform. Syon Abbey received support from Lancastrian as well as Yorkist factions and gained a reputation as a center of learning and devotional activity. After Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy in 1534 and the subsequent dissolution of the monasteries, the Bridgettine community sought exile on the Continent, eventually settling in Lisbon in 1594 after a brief return to England in 1557–1559. The Bridgettine community became the only English Catholic religious community to exist continuously from the medieval period through the Reformation and into the contemporary era. The community returned to England in 1861, and Syon Abbey closed in 2011.