Thomas Audley

Lord Chancellor

Thomas Audley, (1488 – ), Speaker of the House of Commons and Thomas More’s successor as Lord Chancellor.

Week 10: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 1)

When Thomas More resigns, Cromwell suggests Audley for the job as Lord Chancellor. “Audley is a good lawyer, and he is his own man, but he understands how to be useful. And he understands me, I think.” What a great introduction!

Later, he is at the king’s council, taking Henry Percy through his list of denials.

Week 12: Anna Regina (Part 1)

Audley is a prudent lawyer who can sift a sentence like a cook sifting a sack of rice for grit. An eloquent speaker, he is tenacious of a point, and devoted to his career; now that he’s Chancellor he aims to make an income to go with the office. As for what he believes, it’s up for negotiation; he believes in Parliament, in the king’s power exercised in Parliament, and in matters of faith … let’s say his convictions are flexible.

Week 13: Anna Regina (Part 2)

Lord Chancellor Audley looks like he is enjoying the pomp of Anne’s coronation.

Week 14: Devil's Spit / A Painter’s Eye

Audley brings in Richard Riche to help with the interrogation of Elizabeth Barton. Audley is smooth and hearty, Riche is young and lacks imagination. When the nun talks of hunting and falling down a bottomless pit to Hell, Audely says: “I wish I were going hunting.”

When he is not interrogating, Audley is polishing his chain of office, in Cromwell’s imagination. When Riche is frisked for mushrooms at the gates of Austin Friars, he complains: “I don’t think they would have asked the Lord Chancellor for mushrooms.”

“Oh, they would, Richard. But in an hour you will eat them with eggs baked in cream, and the Lord Chancellor will not.”

Week 15: Supremacy

Norfolk accuses Audley of being Cromwell’s parrot, having no opinion of his own. Audley cannot understand a man like Thomas More, who would risk everything on a matter of conscience. He lets Cromwell do the shouting and Cranmer do the persuading, while he sits back and opens a window to let the birdsong in.

Week 17: The Map of Christendom (Part 2) / To Wolf Hall

The committee to the Tower to put the oath to Thomas More. “Riche to make notes; Audley to make jokes.” But there are few jokes to make. More will not be tortured, but he will be tried for treason.

Week 24: The Black Book (Part 3)

Note to self: when you are having a bad day, Audley will be there at the sidelines saying: ‘Game little cockerel’ and ‘Poor ambassador. He looks like someone being carried by slavers to the Barbary coast.’

But then again, he will also be there to soothe: ‘Peace, peace. We will do the apologising, Monsieur. Let him cool down. Never fear.’

Week 26: Master of Phantoms (Part 2/5)

At Anne Boleyn’s arrest, Cromwell whispers to Audley that they should have left William Kingston at home so as not to frighten Anne. ‘We could have, certainly; but don’t you think, Master Secretary, that you’re frightening enough on your own account?’

   It amazes him, the Lord Chancellor's levity, as they pass into the open air.

On the barge, Audley tells Cromwell he has his ‘work cut out there’ to save Wyatt from the king’s vengeance. And on the way back, he jokes at Lord Norfolk’s expense:

‘He may pound you into a different shape entirely,’ Audley says. ‘You may wake up a duke and by noon you may be curved into a horseboy.’

Week 29: The Book of Phantoms (Part 5/5) / Spoils

Audley attends the queen’s trial. As the annulment of her marriage, Cramner proposes that they do not make the reasons public. Audley says: ‘The truth is so rare and precious that sometimes it must be kept under lock and key.’

Week 32: Salvage (Part 2/3)

Lord Audley doesn’t appear to have been paying attention when Richard Riche addressed the commons. Someone has to take him aside to explain all that went on. Audley has been speaker in his time, but has now risen to higher things.

The irrepressible Thomas Audley at king’s council offers his Majesty a cushion or ‘a more capacious chair.’ A tactful Cromwell ‘presses a palm across his own mouth.

Week 41: The Image of the King (Part 1/2)

Audley talks with John Husee about the situation in Calais. His jaw drops when Jane mentions she may be pregnant. At council he drops his penknife in shock when Cromwell says he will kill Reginald Pole himself.

Week 43: Nonsuch

Audley notices the king looking at Anne Bassett, Lady Lisle’s daughter. ‘She seems a biddible wench.’ He seems surprised to learn that Cromwell has been reading her letters.

Week 47: Ascension Day (Part 2/2)

At a council meeting just after Easter, 1539, Audley jokes that ‘We are the fellowship of the Round Table, you know, and that chair of yours is the Siege Perilous. It stood empty for ten thousand years, till Lord Cromwell came to fill it.’

After Cromwell’s illness and the Six Articles, Cranmer asks: ‘Where was Lord Audley in this? Opening and shutting his mouth like one of those wooden idols worked by strings.’ Cromwell no longer trusts him.

Week 48: Twelfth Night

At King’s Council, Audley is ready with the jokes: Of course, Cromwell is no heretic. Heretics have no private property, and he, Cromwell, holds nothing in common.