Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/264

 Audley Commons, but to the Bohemians only. The warning, however, was significant.

Audley's professional advancement at this time scarcely kept pace with his political distinction. It was just two years after his election as speaker that we find him called to the degree of serjeant-at-law, and a day or two later, on 14 Nov. 1531, he was appointed a king's serjeant (, Origines, 83). He received, however, from the crown, on 2 March 1531, a grant of lands in Colchester and Mile End in Essex (Calendar of Henry VIII, v. 166, 1) ; and next year he attained all at once a degree of professional eminence which his antecedents scarcely seemed to justify. An incident related by Hall the chronicler will perhaps enable us to comprehend why this promotion was conferred on him.

During the prorogued session of parliament held in April 1532, a motion was made in the House of Commons by a member named Temse that the king, who had now for some months separated from Queen Katharine, though he had not yet obtained his divorce, should be urged to take back his queen and avoid the grave dangers that might arise from the bastardising of his only daughter Mary. This was a degree of independence that Henry did not expect of his faithful Commons, though their remonstrances on other subjects very often suited his purposes well enough. On the last day of April he sent for Audley, the speaker, and some others, and reminded them in the first place how they had exhibited last year a bill of grievances against the clergy, which he had delivered to his spiritual subjects to make answer to, and how he had just received their reply, which he delivered into Audley's hands, intimating that he thought himself it would scarcely satisfy them. 'But,' said the king, 'you be a great sort of wise men. I doubt not but you will look circumspectly on the matter, and we will be indifferent between you.' Having thus, with a pretence of neutrality, assured them of his support against the clergy, he went on to express his astonishment that one of their House should have ventured to speak of his separation from the queen, a matter which it was not their province to determine, seeing that it touched his conscience. He added that he wished with all his heart that he could find the marriage good, but he had received the decisions of many universities that it was invalid and detestable in the sight of God ; that he had not been moved by a wanton appetite at forty-one years of age to abandon the queen for the sake of some one else; but that he felt it a positive duty to part company with her. For nowhere but in Spain and Portugal had a man been known to marry two sisters, and as for the marriage with a brother's wife, it was so abhorred among all christian nations, that he had never heard of any christian doing so except himself. This disgraceful piece of hypocrisy Audley was commissioned to report to the House of Commons as the sincere grounds of the king's conduct, and he did so as in duty bound.

Before the session ended he was sent for again to come before the king, along with twelve of his own house and eight peers, to whom the king made an address, declaring that he had discovered that the clergy were but half his subjects. They had taken an oath, indeed, to him, but they had taken an oath to the pope as well, which was quite inconsistent with their allegiance to him. This matter he wished the Commons to take carefully into consideration, and Audley accordingly caused the two oaths to be read in parliament, thus preparing the way for the Act of Supremacy, which was passed two years later.

This conference with the king was on 11 May 1532. On the 16th of the same month Sir Thomas More, not liking the king's proceedings, was allowed to resign the office of lord chancellor, and surrendered the great seal into the king's own keeping. Four days later Henry delivered it to Audley with instructions to discharge all the duties of a lord chancellor, though he was only to be called, for the present, keeper of the great seal. That same day the king made him a knight, and on 5 June following, being the first day of Trinity term, he took his oath in the court of Chancery as keeper of the great seal. His powers were more formally set forth in a commission dated 5 Oct. following; but in the beginning of next year it was found advisable to give him the name as well as the duties of lord chancellor, and he was appointed to that office on 26 Jan, 1533 (ib. v. 1075, 1295, 1499 (9), vi. 73). The name of lord chancellor, apparently, had been withheld from him at first in order that he might still act as speaker of the House of Commons; but now Humphrey Wingfield was chosen speaker in his place, and Audley took his seat upon the woolsack in the House of Lords. During the time he was lord keeper the king ordered the old great seal (in which the lettering was very much worn) to be destroyed and a new one to be made.

From this time his whole career is that of a submissive instrument in the hands of Henry VIII and his great minister Cromwell, Sickly in his physical constitution,