From Colchester town clerk to King Henry VIII’s right-hand man, Thomas Audley was the ultimate social climber
This one’s worth examining. A barrister and judge of the Tudor era who was Lord Chancellor from 1533-44, Thomas Audley, Baron Audley of Walden, was an Essex-born mover and shaker. He prospered during the reign of Henry VIII, as did other low-born statesmen such as those other Thomases, Wolsey and Cromwell, base men whom Henry raised so would do his bidding. Wolsey was almost certainly on his way to be executed when he died, whilst Cromwell was executed. Audley was the great survivor, although he probably would have sold his best mate down the swanny if it had guaranteed his own neck.
Born at Hay House in Earls Colne in c.1488, not long after the end of the Wars of the Roses, Audley was the son of an administrator. The family hailed from Colchester and there’s familial memorials in a chapel at nearby Berechurch. It’s believed he studied at Cambridge and was then trained for the law, becoming someone of local prominence, firstly town clerk in Colchester (1514), then an Essex JP in 1520.
Come 1523, he’d gone a step further as an Essex MP. He’d become a member of the household of Thomas Wolsey, who was Henry VIII’s main man in the early part of his reign. Wolsey’s fall from grace due to his failure to secure the King’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon led to more promotions for Audley. He became in rapid order: Speaker of the House of Commons (1529), Attorney for the Duchy of Lancaster (1530) and King’s Sergeant (1531). It was a stellar progression. As Speaker, he’d preside over the so-called Reformation Parliament, which abolished the Pope’s jurisdiction over the English church.
Audley furthered Henry’s designs so took on any recalcitrant clergy and prepared the revolutionary Act of Supremacy, which made Henry Head of the English Church. Audley reaped the rewards with ecclesiastical bits and pieces following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, or as author Thomas Fuller put it: ‘Carving for himself in the feast of abbey lands the first cut, and that a dainty morsel.’
One of those dissolved abbeys was Walden Abbey, where Audley built his Audley End, later superseded by a magnificent Jacobean mansion, courtesy of Audley’s grandson, Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk. Audley gained other Essex lands, including St Botolph’s in Colchester and Prittlewell Priory, as well as other manors in the county.
He wasn’t totally rapacious as he tried to save two Essex abbeys, St Osyth’s and St John’s (Colchester), as ‘colleges’ where the poor could still receive ‘daily relief’, but he failed in that particular undertaking. St Osyth’s closed, the lands heading Cromwell’s way, whilst St John’s was similarly dissolved, its abbot hanged in the process.
In 1532, Audley became Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and the following January was confirmed as Lord Chancellor - or Henry’s head honcho. This wasn’t necessarily a bed of roses as the previous incumbent had been one Thomas More, who’d let his principles get in the way of furthering Henry’s cause, a bit of moral probity for which he paid with his life.
Audley wouldn’t make the same mistake; whatever Henry desired, Henry got. He’d be knighted as he supported the King’s divorce from Catherine, his marriage to Anne, then presided over the trials of dissidents Thomas More and John Fisher, both of whom were executed by decapitation.
Audley was named in the commission for the trial of Henry’s second queen, Anne Boleyn, who was framed on trumped-up adultery charges, her principal crime being her failure to give the king his desired son. ‘Furthering the designs of Henry VIII’ meant acquiescing in the putting away of Anne (also by decapitation) so Henry could remarry to Jane Seymour and finally gain that son, the future Edward VI.
In 1537, Audley condemned to death those who’d participated in the Pilgrimage of Grace, a rebellion occurring in the north of England where loyalties to the old Roman Catholic religion remained strong.
There was a touch of Groundhog Day about Audley participating in the commission for the examination of Henry’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard, who was guilty of the adultery Anne almost certainly was not. They shared the same fate though. Thomas was rewarded for putting his King’s interests first (and his own a close second) by being created Baron Audley of Walden in 1538.
Furthermore, in 1540, he’d be made a Knight of the Garter and would sort out the attainder for another fallen King’s servant, Thomas Cromwell, who’d recommended Henry’s fourth marriage to Anne of Cleves, a bride the King took an immediate dislike to on meeting her.
The executioner’s axe came out of storage again. Audley was a smart cookie. He’d been a staunch ally of Cromwell but knew where his bread was buttered. If toadying to the King meant abandoning a one-time colleague, then so be it. There was little room for loyalty or sentimentality in the Henrician court. Audley has been described as ‘a useful emollient’, someone who smoothed Henry’s way.
Audley married twice, his second wife being Elizabeth Grey, daughter of Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, which improved his standing still further. He died on 30 April 1544, having surrendered his Great Seal, the symbol of his powers, nine days previously due to his developing illness. He was buried, at his own request, in Saffron Walden’s Church of St Mary the Virgin.
Thomas Fuller (Worthies of England, 1662) had plenty to say about Audley and continued where his black marble tomb was concerned, saying it was: ‘Not blacker than the soul, or harder than the heart, of the man whose bones lie beneath it’. Ouch.
The historians’ view is that he was unscrupulous. An alternative take might be that he was savvy; he kept his head whilst others lost theirs. Walking that fine line between getting on but not making oneself a target is summed up in Audley’s own words: ‘If I had done nothing I had not been seen; if I had done much I had not been suffered’.
CHRONOLOGY
c.1488 – Birth of Thomas Audley at Earls Colne, Essex.
1514 – Begins his ascent of the greasy pole as town clerk in Colchester.
1523 – Audley becomes an Essex MP, a person of prominence, locally at least.
1529 – As Speaker of the Commons, Audley presides over the Restoration Parliament.
1533 – Audley becomes Lord Chancellor, or Henry VIII’s head honcho.
1538 – Created Baron Audley of Walden. He’d build Audley End on the Walden Abbey site.
1540 – Audley is created a Knight of the Garter as he continues to be in Henry’s good books.
1544 – Death of Thomas Audley in London (30 April) aged c.56.
