Background
Audley was born in Earls Colne, Essex in 1488, the son of Geoffrey Audley.
Audley was born in Earls Colne, Essex in 1488, the son of Geoffrey Audley.
He was educated for the law, entered the Middle Temple (becoming autumn reader in 1526), was town clerk of Colchester, and was on the commission of the peace for Essex in 1321.
Audley was a lawyer from Essex, who became town clerk of Colchester in 1514 and was elected to Parliament for the borough in 1523. In this capacity he presided over the trials of More, Fisher, and the accomplices of Anne Boleyn.
In 1523 he was returned to parliament for Essex, and represented this constituency in subsequent parliaments.
In 1531 he had been made a serjeant-at-law and king's serjeant; and on the 20th of May 1532 he was knighted, and succeeded Sir Thomas More as lord keeper of the great seal, being appointed lord chancellor on the 26th of January 1533.
In 1538 he was given a barony and he acquired the estates of the abbey of Walden at the dissolution of the monasteries.
In 1540 he received the Garter and saw through the attainder against Thomas Cromwell.
In 1542 he warmly supported the privileges of the Commons in the case of George Ferrers, member for Plymouth, arrested and imprisoned in London, but his conduct was inspired as usual by subservience to the court, which desired to secure a subsidy, and his opinion that the arrest was a flagrant contempt has been questioned by good authority.
In 1542 he re-endowed and re-established Buckingham College, Cambridge, under the new name of St Mary Magdalene, and ordained in the statutes that his heirs, " the possessors of the late monastery of Walden, " should be visitors of the college in perpetuum.
A Book of Orders for the Warre both by Sea and Land (Harleian MS. 297, f. 144) is attributed to his authorship.
His barony became extinct at his death.
He interpreted the king's " moral " scruples to parliament concerning his marriage with Catherine, and made himself the instrument of the king in the attack upon the clergy and the preparation of the act of supremacy.
He supported the king's divorce from Catherine and the marriage with Anne Boleyn; and presided at the trial of Fisher and More in 1533, at which his conduct and evident intention to secure a conviction has been generally censured.
Quotations: Audley's reputation was as a complete time-server and his motto was said to have been ‘Had I done nothing I had not been seen; if I had done much, I had not been suffered. ’
He married (1) Christina, daughter of Sir Thomas Barnardiston, and (2) Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Grey, marquess of Dorset, by whom he had two daughters.
