“To enable us justly to appreciate the importance of this measure, it must not be forgotten that by this one act three hundred and seventy-six monasteries were simultaneously suppressed, and their revenues, of the yearly value of 32,000l., placed at the king’s disposal, together with their personal property, amounting to 100,000l.; and so absolute was the monarch’s authority, and so abject the servility of his Parliament, under the guidance of their Speaker, that no opposition was offered to the bill during its progress through the House of Commons. We may easily imagine that Henry was not a little pleased with these proceedings; and Audley’s services became so necessary to him that he was, in the ensuing year, constituted Attorney-General for the duchy of Lancaster, and, in November following, made King’s Sergeant; and so rapid was his promotion, that, on the 20th of May, 1532, we find him, upon the resignation of Sir Thomas More, knighted, and appointed Keeper of the Great Seal; and, in January 26, 1532-3, Lord Chancellor. In the exercise of his new functions Audley proved as subservient to the wishes of his royal master as he had shewn himself upon all former occasions; and having, while Speaker, gratified the king, as well as the people, by passing six bills to restrain the power of the clergy, and greatly forwarded the measure of dissolving the lesser religious establishments, he now undertook the arduous task of obtaining the surrender of the more wealthy foundations; and in this enterprise his endeavours were shortly crowned with complete success; and, before the expiration of two years, the king found himself in possession of all the remaining monastic establishments, producing, with those already dissolved, an annual income, according to Hume, of 142,914l.”[19]
Henry thus acquired ample funds for the remuneration of those ministers and favourites who had been the instruments of his tyranny, and who had ensured the consummation of his grand designs; amongst these Audley, as the principal actor, was not forgotten, and he revelled in the church spoliation he had ensured his master. The rich priory of Christ Church, Aldgate, with all the church plate and lands belonging to that house, was first granted him; and afterwards many portions of the estates previously belonging to the lesser religious houses of Essex, with licenses to alienate them, of which he duly availed himself. Thus St. Botolph’s priory at Colchester, with all its revenues, the priory of the Crouched Friars in the same town, and Tiltey Abbey, near Thaxted, were added to the list of his monastic spoils, after the gifts from the king in 1538, on Sir Thomas’s application, of the rich abbey of Walden, with all the estates, manors, and advowsons thereunto attached. He was also created Lord Audley of Walden, and installed a Knight of the Garter. “Yet,” says Lord Braybrooke, “instead of Audley’s being contented with these repeated marks of the royal favour, we are compelled to admit that every grant which he obtained encouraged him to importune the king for further recompense; and his letters, preserved in the Cottonian library, prove that, in making these applications, he was mean enough to plead poverty as an excuse, and even to assert that his character had suffered in consequence of the public services which he had been obliged to perform.” With a watchfulness for every advantage which might accrue to him, and a continued solicitation for gifts, he continued to enjoy the king’s confidence till his death, in 1544. He is buried in the church of Saffron Walden, where a plain altar-tomb of black marble perpetuates his memory.
Sir Thomas Audley left two daughters, and the youngest, dying in 1546, left the eldest (Margaret) sole heiress. She married Lord Henry Dudley at the early age of fourteen; he was arraigned for high treason in 1533, and, pleading guilty, was ordered for death; but Mary pardoned him, and restored his property. He was killed at the battle of St. Quintin’s, in Picardy, in 1557, and his widow, in the same year, married Thomas, the fourth Duke of Norfolk, dying herself at the early age of twenty-three.
The Howards thus became possessed of Audley End; but the duke’s ill-judged project of forming a matrimonial alliance with Mary Queen of Scots, under the impression that, if they both survived Elizabeth, he should eventually become king-consort of England, was a scheme which cost him his life; he was beheaded for high-treason on Tower Hill, June 2, 1572—a sentence which he bore with exemplary fortitude.
His son, Lord Thomas Howard, was the builder of Audley End. He was restored in blood by act of Parliament in 1583, and, when very young, embraced the military service, but abandoned it for success at court, where he sought every opportunity of ingratiating himself with the queen, and succeeded, in a great measure, in obtaining her countenance. During the next reign, almost the whole of his life was passed at court; and although the high and lucrative offices which he held afforded him more ample means of displaying his magnificence than those enjoyed by his ancestors, he contrived to eclipse them all in extravagance; and we are assured that in the building of Audley End alone he expended a no less sum than 190,000l. He was much honoured by King James I., and was advanced by him to the Earldom of Suffolk, and made Lord Chamberlain, and afterwards Lord High Treasurer of England. Lady Suffolk was, unfortunately, a woman of a covetous mind, and having too great an ascendancy over her husband, used it in making him a party to her extortions on persons who had business to transact at the Treasury, or places to obtain at court; and her husband was charged with embezzlement, deprived of his office, and fined 30,000l., but which was reduced by the king to 7000l. He was generally considered to have been chiefly guilty only in concealing the mal-practices of his wife, who eventually died in debt and difficulty.
From this period the history of the possessors of Audley End is a mere confused piece of family biography, of little interest to the general reader: they seem never to have recovered the charges entailed upon them by the building of Audley End, and constant curtailments of the house and park were made by each succeeding owner up to the partition of the estates in 1747. The cost of the original building appears to have involved Lord Suffolk greatly, for we learn from one of his letters, printed in the “Cabala,” that, at the period of his committal to the Tower, he was in debt nearly 40,000l., though he had then recently sold the Charter House to Mr. Sutton for 13,000l., and disposed of his property at Aynhoe in Northamptonshire; and he died possessed of Lulworth and Framlingham Castle, and Charlton in Wiltshire, with the estates belonging to them, as well as Suffolk House in the Strand, besides the large Essex property derived through his mother, Margaret Audley. At all events the cost of the building must have been very serious, nor did the charge of maintaining it prove less formidable; so much so, in fact, that none of the possessors of Audley End, after the death of the first Earl of Suffolk, were enabled to keep an establishment suitable to the size and magnificence of the house. Earl Theophilus and his son James, the third earl, seem, indeed, to have resided there; but the latter, of whom it is not recorded that he took any active part during the Commonwealth, lived in retirement, and, after the Restoration, gladly availed himself of the opportunity of alienating the house and park to Charles II., and thus dispose of a possession which, from his being unable to enjoy it, could only be considered as a source of mortification.
At this period the house was of regal magnificence, and consisted, besides the offices, of various ranges of building, surrounding two spacious quadrangular courts; that to the westward was the largest, and was approached over a bridge across the lake, through a double avenue of limes, terminating with a double-entrance gateway, flanked by four circular towers. The apartments on the north and south sides of the principal court were erected over an open cloister, and supported by pillars of alabaster; while, on the eastern side, a flight of steps led to the entrance-porches, placed on a terrace running parallel to the great hall, which formed the centre of the building, and which is now the principal front of the mansion, despoiled as it at present is of its grand entrance-court. Beyond the hall was the inner court, surrounded by an arcade, over which were the principal apartments, the three sides of which only remain, while the chapel beyond has been entirely demolished. It will thus be seen that the present house is but a wreck of the original building.[20]
Of the original architect, Lord Braybrooke thus writes: “According to Horace Walpole, Bernard Jansen was the architect employed; but after hazarding this assertion he contrives to establish a stronger claim in behalf of John Thorpe, who built many of the houses of the nobility about that period, and whose partiality for what Walpole terms barbarous