AUDLEY, John (d.1490), of Brambletye, Suss. and Bryanston, Dorset.

The family of Audley of Heleigh castle, Staffordshire, and Red Castle, Shropshire, descended without failure of the male line from the twelfth century until late in the fourteenth, during which period three of its members were summoned to Parliament. When the 3rd Lord, Nicholas, died without issue in 1391, he left as his principal heir his great-nephew John Tuchet, grandson and heir of Sir John Tuchet (d.1371) of Markeaton, Derbyshire, who sat in the Upper House under Henry IV and died in 1408. His son and heir, James, the father of our MP, was summoned from 1421 to 1455, and distinguished himself not only in the wars in France but in the administration of south Wales, as justiciar from 1423 to 1438 and chamberlain from 1439 until his death 20 years later. As a boy Lord James had been a ward of William, Lord Roos, who married him to his daughter Margaret, a grand-daughter of John Arundel, Lord Arundel. John, our MP, was their son and heir. The date of his birth is uncertain, but early in 1415 the marriage had not yet been consummated, and by February 1430 his mother had died and his father had married again. A deposition of 1478 in which he was said to be aged 50 ‘and more’, places his birth as between 1418 and 1428. CP, i. 336-42; R.A. Griffiths, Principality of Wales, i. 137-8, 185; CIPM, xix. 428, 434; Feudal Aids, vi. 508; CPL, xiii (2), 689-90. At the time of his father’s second marriage John was the heir apparent to the Audley and Tuchet estates in ten counties, of which the most important were situated in Shropshire, Staffordshire and Somerset. Lord James’s Welsh interests were concentrated on his moiety of the castle and lordship of Newport in Pembrokeshire, and third part of the castle and lordship of Llandovery in Carmarthenshire, although these two estates had been valued in 1408 at no more than £84 p.a. owing to the destruction wreaked by the rebels under Owen Glendower. The clear value of the whole inheritance given in inquisitions post mortem in the early fifteenth century as £425 p.a. was almost certainly an underestimate. CIPM, xix. 588-603.

Even so, John’s inheritance was to be depleted by the provision Lord James made for the children of his second marriage. Lord James may have hoped to provide for them from the estates of his late father-in-law, Edmund Holand, earl of Kent, but his wife, Eleanor, failed to prove her claim to be an heiress when she was shown in the Parliament of 1431 to be illegitimate. PROME, x. 461-3; Genealogist, n.s. xxviii. 62. CP, i. 341-2 wrongly states that she was an illegit. da. of Thomas Holand, earl of Kent. Her mother was Constance of York, wid. of Thomas, Lord Despenser. There can therefore be little doubt that when, in 1436, Lord James contracted to pay £600 for the marriage of John’s half-sister Elizabeth to Sir Edward Brooke* (summoned as Lord Cobham from 1445), this money had to come from his own resources. CCR, 1435-41, p. 101; CP, iii. 346. Later on he made settlements of land from his patrimony on his four younger sons: lands in Shropshire and Staffordshire worth at least £30 p.a. were destined for John’s half-brother Thomas; more in Staffordshire and Wiltshire (the latter worth £14 10s. p.a.) for Edmund (the future bishop of Rochester), and in Shropshire (worth £40 p.a.) for Humphrey, while a less clearly-defined portion was set aside for the youngest, Henry. Then too, Lady Audley was provided with a handsome jointure. How our MP regarded these arrangements does not transpire: reluctantly or otherwise he gave his formal assent to the settlements in February 1455. CCR, 1454-61, pp. 53-54; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 385, 387, 388.

Although his father was nearly always called Tuchet, John generally used the name of Audley. Curiously for the heir to a barony, he was destined for a career not as a soldier like his father but as a professional administrator and steward of large landed estates. He appears to have been initially brought up as a squire in the household of Reynold Kentwood, dean of St. Paul’s, who left him ten marks in his will of 1441, Reg. Chichele, ii. 590. but references to him in the early 1440s provide few clues about his subsequent movements. His appearance as a witness in October 1443 when his kinsman William Bonville (the son and heir apparent of Sir William Bonville*) made a gift of a yearly rent from the lordship of Merston in Sussex, places him for the first time in that locality. CCR, 1441-7, p. 188. In 1446 he was granted jointly with one of the King’s serjeants the keepership of Berkswell park, Warwickshire, during the minority of the heiress of the duke of Warwick, although whether this appointment came about through contacts with the Beauchamp affinity or the royal household itself is unclear. CPR, 1441-6, p. 433. Probably by the time that, in October 1447, his father took out royal letters of exemption for life from further attendance in the King’s Parliaments and Councils, John had become an esquire to John Stafford, archbishop of Canterbury, the leading feoffee of the Audley estates and chancellor of England. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 113, 322. At an unknown date the queen wrote to the archbishop saying that she understood from a petition presented to her by John Reignold, yeoman of the King’s hall, that Audley ‘a squier of youres’ had wrongfully put him out of a certain livelihood. She asked Stafford that after examining the truth of the petition he would ‘sett a good quiet and rest betwix them’. Letters Margaret of Anjou (Cam. Soc. lxxxvi), 100. In the late 1440s Audley and others were also at variance with William Haute* over title to the manor of Ackholt in Kent; an accord was reached in May 1448 and he and his fellows relinquished possession shortly afterwards. Harl. Chs. 76 A 12, 78 F 37, 80 C 24. Other transactions in which Audley figured as a feoffee or as a recipient of goods and chattels in the same period, place him in the Lambeth area of Surrey (perhaps because of his duties as a member of the archbishop’s entourage, based at Lambeth palace). CCR, 1447-54, pp. 132, 256. Lack of evidence makes it uncertain at what point he was made steward of the estates of the archbishopric, although it is possible that he was the immediate successor of James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele, murdered in 1450.

Audley’s marriage provided him with interests elsewhere, in particular in Dorset and Hampshire, for his wife Anne was the widow of John Roger of Bryanston (the elder son and heir of John Roger† the wealthy Bridport merchant and landowner), who died in the autumn of 1450. Roger had instructed his feoffees to settle on Anne all his holdings in Hampshire, situated in King’s Somborne, Dibden, Petersfield and elsewhere, while she also had jointure in Bryanston and other properties in Dorset, besides manorial holdings in Somerset. Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, i. 258; C139/140/34; CPR, 1446-52, p. 411; CCR, 1435-41, p. 188; CP25(1)/207/32/11. The Roger estates had been valued at as much as £171 p.a. many years earlier in 1412, long before they reached their largest extent, and it seems likely that Anne’s share was worth much more than the £46 p.a. suggested at her post mortem. CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 160-2; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 227. Before the death in May 1452 of Archbishop Stafford, who acted as his feoffee, Audley settled on his wife in jointure a manor in Lincolnshire, to which he added a month later others in Rutland and Somerset. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 591, 603; ii. no. 148. Presumably these were family properties already assigned to him by his father. Before he came into possession of his patrimony, he evidently sought to make additions to the estates he held jure uxoris. In June 1452 he received from the last surviving feoffee appointed by Archbishop Stafford certain lands in Kings Somborne, Little Somborne and Sparsholt, together with a reversionary interest in more in Enham in Hampshire, and in November 1454 the manor of Kings Somborne itself. However, he then, on 20 May 1455 (coincidentally, just before the battle of St. Albans) conveyed the same manor and property in London to Bishop Waynflete of Winchester for the endowment of Magdalen College, Oxford. He was clearly reluctant to do so, for he had to be bound in recognizances in 1,000 marks to complete the transaction within three years. It may be the case that in these conveyances Audley was acting on behalf of the late archbishop, CCR, 1454-61, pp. 67, 102; Magdalen Coll. Oxf. Somborne Regis deeds, A1, 9, 28, 48, 110, Enham deeds, B191, 203, 219. This does not relate to the Roger manor of Marsh Court in King’s Somborne, which descended in the Roger fam.: VCH Hants, iv. 473. for when Stafford had died intestate he had been appointed administrator of his goods. E159/229, recorda Trin. rot. 54; 230, brevia Hil. rot. 13d, recorda Easter rots. 22d, 24; 234, recorda Hil. rot. 53; C67/42, m. 40; CP40/809, rot. 55.

Meanwhile, Audley had begun to serve on royal commissions in 1451, while Stafford was still alive, his first such appointment being to help look into the complaints brought by soldiers against Lord Hoo, the former chancellor of France. These soldiers had contributed to the considerable unrest in the south-east in the aftermath of Cade’s rebellion, and Audley played a part in restoring order. In June that year he was granted 40 marks for his costs in capturing the ‘false traitour’ Thomas Skinner. E404/67/190; E403/785, 7 Aug. It is difficult to explain Audley’s election to the Parliament of 1453 for the county of Sussex. At this stage in his career he does not seem to have had significant links with the royal household, HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 29, asserts that he received a royal annuity of £20 paid from 6 Nov. 1453, but this is a misunderstanding of the record on the issue roll, E403/819, 5 May (1459), relating to the assignment of £20 to replace a tally for this amount issued to Audley on 6 Nov. 1453, itself partly replacing tallies for 40 marks issued on 7 Aug. 1451 (his reward for taking Skinner the traitor): E403/785, 7 Aug.; 796, 6 Nov. and his patron Archbishop Stafford, who had been influential in the region, had died the year before. His father had few landed interests in the county (only three and a half knights’ fees in the rape of Hastings, which in 1428 had been said to be ‘submersa et devastata per fluxum maris’), and although John himself later held property in the west of the county, at Wisborough and Kirdford, according to a valor of the Audley estates made after his death all his holdings in Sussex were worth only £8 18s. 4d. p.a., a tiny fraction of his income as a whole. Feudal Aids, v. 151; KB27/833, rot. 94; SC11/828. On the other hand, John was still steward of the estates of the archbishopric and administrator of the late archbishop’s goods, his wife came from a prominent Sussex family and he had established useful links with members of the local gentry. For instance, in the early 1450s he was party to settlements of dower made on Constance, widow of Sir Henry Hussey*, a leading landowner in west Sussex, and he continued to take an interest in her affairs for several years more. CCR, 1447-54, pp. 260-2; Add. Chs. 18748, 18758. More significant with regard to his election to Parliament is the statement he made a year later that his usual dwelling place was situated in the diocese of Chichester. This would appear to have been at Brambletye near East Grinstead, an estate previously held by the family of St. Cler, which would later pass by marriage to his wife’s kinsmen the Lewknors, although precisely how Audley acquired his interest there remains unclear. CPL, x. 696; Magdalen Coll. Enham deed, A89; Suss. Arch. Trust, Lewes, Firle Place mss, 259, 261; Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxii. 2.

Audley’s fellow knight of the shire was (Sir) Roger Lewknor*, now head of this influential family, who was currently engaged in a dispute with his half-brothers over their patrimony. While Parliament was in recess in the autumn of 1453 Audley and one of these half-brothers, Richard Lewknor*, were quarrelling in the law courts over ownership of a pyx containing deeds, among them a grant by Audley’s wife to Richard, her cousin, of an annual rent of £20 from her lands in Hampshire. Richard claimed to have accidently lost the pyx in Holborn in the previous year, and both he and Audley brought actions in the court of common pleas against a widow named Isabel Tregornow for its return. The widow said she had found the pyx and had always been prepared to relinquish it to whichever of the claimants the judges considered best entitled to it. Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 215. While the Parliament was still in progress, Audley was party to another lawsuit. Together with three other esquires (John, Lord Clinton, John Trevelyan* and William Say*), he came to the court of the Exchequer on 29 Nov. 1454 to plead by bill against John Fogg† the former sheriff of Kent, regarding an error in the process of a suit at the assizes brought against them by Roger Clitheroe over property in Ash near Sandwich. The dispute, by then in its fifth year, had already prompted proceedings against another sheriff, Stephen Slegge*, and the aggrieved plaintiffs felt entitled to damages of £1,500. KB27/762, rot. 84d; E13/145B, rot. 9d. Also in 1454, Audley petitioned Pope Nicholas V to complain that Thomas Bekynton, bishop of Bath and Wells, having falsely alleged that he was responsible for repairs to the episcopal palace of Wells and to certain manor-houses and churches of that diocese, had caused him to be summoned before commissaries named by the abbot of Cleeve, resulting in a public citation and admonition in the parish church of East Grinstead. The pope ordered the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of Winchester and the abbot of Westminster to conduct the appeal. CPL, x. 696. It may be that Audley’s alleged responsibilities in the diocese of Bath and Wells stemmed from Archbishop Stafford’s earlier occupancy of the see. Similar obscurity surrounds Audley’s appointment as steward and coroner in Sussex for the King’s collegiate foundation at Cambridge. All we know is that he took on the position before October 1455, continued to hold it for at least seven years, and was later a feoffee of lands in East Grinstead, near the college’s liberty. Suss. Arch. Collns. xcv. 55; CP25(1)/241/91/5; CAD, vi. C4242.

Audley was evidently under quite severe political and financial pressures in the early months of 1455. In February, whether willingly or under duress, he consented to his father’s settlements on his half-brothers, and, as already recounted, in May, perhaps also reluctantly, he agreed to relinquish lands in Hampshire to Bishop Waynflete. There is no evidence to show whether he took part in the battle of St. Albans, and if so on which side, although in December he was among those sent letters under the privy seal to attend on the victorious duke of York and assist him in putting down the rebellions in the West Country. PPC, vi. 270. He was first appointed to the bench in Dorset in November 1456, and for a while that winter he acted as lieutenant of the royal park at Clarendon in Wiltshire, then in the keeping of Sir William Beauchamp*, Lord St. Amand. On the day before Lord St. Amand died on 19 Mar. 1457, Audley attached himself to a new patron. At Hooke in Dorset he was formally retained for life by James Butler, earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, binding himself by the ‘feith of his body and by this endenture’ that next to the King and before all other lords of England he would do the earl as good, true and faithful service as he could within the realm. In return he received an annuity of 20 marks charged on the earl’s manor of Haselbury, and the assurance that whenever he was staying with his lord’s household he would have ‘budge of courte’ for himself and for as many of his men, horses and hackneys as were required. Cam. Miscellany, xxxii. 163, from E159/257, recorda Easter rot. 20 (1) d. Butler’s purpose in retaining Audley was most likely military and political. Audley’s response was probably governed by a need of patronage for financial reasons. This is suggested by a letter from this period ‘wrytun with my sympull hand at Brambulty’ to Bishop Waynflete about the sale of the wardship of William Basket, the son and heir of John Basket*. Audley explained that the child was in Bristol, so could not be brought to the bishop as desired on the following Friday, and informed Waynflete that unless he received payment within the week of the £200 he had been promised he would be utterly ruined, ‘wherfor y requyre you as ye woll answere it fore God that y be notte schamyd’. He pointed out that Waynflete had obtained a bargain the ‘better chepe’ by promising him the money in hand; now Audley required a warrant for it to be returned with the bearer of the letter. ‘Y pray God sonne deliver me hoote of the wood.’ Magdalen Coll. Enham deed, A89, Somborne Regis deed, A114.

In January 1458 Audley took out a royal pardon, but whether for a specific reason is not revealed. C67/42, m. 40. Given his connexion with the earl of Wiltshire there is a strong likelihood that he would stay loyal to Henry VI during the earl’s treasurership, and in the autumn of 1459 he is known to have been with the royal forces, perhaps even in the army which his father Lord Audley raised on the King’s behalf. The army was defeated by the Yorkists at the battle of Blore Heath in Shropshire on 23 Sept., and its commander slain by Sir Roger Kynaston, who thereafter triumphantly adopted the dead baron’s arms. On 13 Dec. at Coventry during the Parliament in which the Yorkist lords were attainted, John received licence to enter all his late father’s estates immediately, without waiting for inquisitions post mortem to be held. In addition, he was granted by way of compensation for the costs incurred in the ‘King’s present journey’ freedom from payment of any reliefs due, and permission to receive the revenues of his inheritance from the date of his father’s death. It is possible that he sat in the Parliament as a member of the Upper House. A month later his half-brother Humphrey, a royal esquire, was granted for life for his good service in the field, the constableship of Snodhill castle, to which their father had been appointed by the now attainted earl of Warwick. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 539, 546.

The chronology of the new Lord Audley’s movements in the early months of 1460 is uncertain. According to one contemporary account, the duke of Somerset, Lord Roos (Audley’s cousin) and Audley himself sailed for Calais at the head of an armed force intending to secure Somerset’s admission as captain of Calais, a post to which he had been appointed on the previous 9 Oct. in place of Warwick, naïvely thinking that the latter ‘wolde lyghtely have 3olde up the sayde offyce to him’. However, the garrisons refused to admit them, and although Somerset managed to flee to Guînes castle and Roos made his escape to Flanders, Audley was taken as a prisoner into Calais. This version of events places Audley’s capture before Warwick’s men seized Lord Rivers at Sandwich. English Chron. (Cam. Soc. lxiv), 84-85. However, another account dates it later, stating that in about March 1460 Audley was dispatched with aid for Somerset at Guînes, but his vessel was driven by storms into Calais, and he was thrust into prison in the castle. Somerset made an attack on Calais on 23 Apr., but failed to effect an entry. Reg. Whethamstede ed. Riley, i. 369-70. What is certain is that by 26 June Audley had been persuaded by his captors to join them in their enterprise: on that date he took ship for Sandwich with the Yorkist earls, the papal legate and some 1,500 men, and in July he was at their side at the battle of Northampton. His links with the Lancastrian earl of Wiltshire were now firmly severed. C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 76; English Chron. 95. It may be noted that while Audley’s brother-in-law Lord Cobham was commanding the left wing for the Yorkists, Wiltshire sacked his house at Holditch, but there is no sign that the brothers-in-law themselves quarreled. By writ dated 30 July Audley was summoned to the Parliament called to meet in the autumn, at which the duke of York’s claim to the throne was to be presented. CCR, 1454-61, p. 462.

There is no doubt of Audley’s unwavering commitment to York and his son and heir Edward, earl of March, from then on. He was with the latter at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross on 2 or 3 Feb. 1461, and after Edward took the throne he stayed close to him. At the beginning of May he was not only made a feoffee of estates to the use of the new King’s sister Anne, duchess of Exeter, but also appointed steward of royal lordships in Dorset and custodian of Wardour castle with a fee of £40 p.a. In July he was granted an Exchequer lease for ten years of the lordship of Gillingham. Scofield, i. 138; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 7, 8, 9, 87; CFR, xx. 33. Edward’s intention was to build up Audley’s territorial influence, thus bolstering his own power. Audley was reappointed as a j.p. in Dorset, took a seat on the benches of six other counties, and was clearly expected to be proactive in imposing order in the localities. He became a member of Edward’s Council at least by 12 Nov., when he was one of four signatories to a writ directed to the under treasurer. E404/72/1/60. At some stage in the following spring, Audley was knighted. Although the writ of summons to Edward’s first Parliament, sent out on 13 June 1461, had called him ‘esquire’, and he was still so styled in February 1462, the Act of Resumption passed in the same Parliament referred to him as Sir John. He was exempted from the Act with regard to the annuity granted him by the late earl of Wiltshire, whose attainder was one of the important matters dealt with by the Lords. Reps. Lords’ Cttees. iv. 951, 954; PROME, xiii. 39. Audley is recorded taking a conspicuous role in the business of the Parliament. Having been appointed a trier of English petitions at the beginning of the session on 4 Nov., he was among the lords present on 1 Dec. who subscribed to certain articles regarding the payment of judges, and eight days later he was assigned with the earls of Worcester and Essex to oversee the bill made ‘for the ease of shirriffs’ and report on it to the King, and with a larger group of his peers delegated to have communication with the merchants of the staple of Calais. On the same day, 9 Dec., he and Worcester were granted various of the estates forfeited by Audley’s cousin Thomas, Lord Roos (who had stayed loyal to Henry VI and had fled with him to Scotland), to hold for the lifetime of Roos’s wife Philippa (who was Worcester’s sister), providing maintenance for her and her children. W.H. Dunham jnr., Fane Fragment, 11, 19, 20; CPR, 1461-7, p. 87.

In the following year Audley was employed with William Neville, earl of Kent, to safeguard the seas, and helped command the expensive naval expedition which landed on the Breton coast in the autumn. Then, in 1464 and once more in association with Worcester, the steward of the Household, he was appointed to treat with the ambassadors of Francis, duke of Brittany, for a truce. W. Dugdale, Baronage (1675-6 edn.), ii. 29. Audley was now well placed to receive patronage from the higher nobility as well as the Crown. In the early 1460s he occupied the sinecure post of chief steward on the bishop of Winchester’s estates, and he later received a life-annuity of ten marks charged on the property in Sussex belonging to the duke of Norfolk, as the duke’s master forester. L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 176-7, 441. On 2 July 1467 the King granted him in tail-male the manors of Shere and Vachery in Surrey, worth £37 5s. p.a., which had been forfeited by his one-time lord the late earl of Wiltshire. Accordingly, it was in Surrey that he now took up residence. CPR, 1467-77, pp. 22, 68.

Audley also hoped to profit from the attainders of other Lancastrians, but here he proved less successful. He was possessed of certain lands in Ludfield, Sussex, in fee simple, and to make good his title he agreed in 1466 or 1467 to pay £100 to (Sir) Thomas Vaughan* to have the evidences relating to the property (which Vaughan claimed as part of the estates forfeited by (Sir) Thomas Brown II*). However, although he delivered two bonds to Vaughan, and made payment of £60 in a transaction facilitated by an Italian merchant, Audley never received the title deeds. Furthermore, Vaughan not only took an action for debt for £40 against Audley’s receiver, but granted title to his stepson Sir George Brown†, who promptly dispossessed Audley of the property. C1/59/24.

When relations between Edward IV and the earl of Warwick broke down in the late 1460s, Audley too had his disagreements with the earl, although whether these were a consequence of policy or personality does not appear from contemporary accounts. It was reported that at the great council held at Coventry in January 1468 Archbishop Neville and Earl Rivers tried to effect a reconciliation between the King and Warwick, and between the latter and other lords including Audley, but with little success. Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), [789]. Audley continued to support the King in bringing his enemies to trial: he helped preside at sessions held at Salisbury in January 1469 when (Sir) Thomas Hungerford* (de jure Lord Hungerford) and the dispossessed heir to the Courtenay earldom of Devon were tried and executed for treason. And he clearly enjoyed Edward’s favour: in June that year he was granted a valuable wardship. PROME, xv. 166-7; CPR, 1467-77, p. 162. Warwick and the duke of Clarence had become increasingly resentful of the circle around the King, and their rebellion which broke out in the following month was specifically directed against the ‘covetous rule and guiding’ of this group, identified in their manifesto as the family of the queen, the earls of Devon and Pembroke (Humphrey Stafford IV* and Sir William Herbert*), Lord Audley and Sir John Fogg. They said that Edward IV had excluded lords of his own blood from his council chamber, and had listened only to the advice of these grasping favourites. J. Warkworth, Chron. Reign Edw. IV (Cam. Soc. x), 46; John Vale’s Bk. ed. Kekewich et. al., 213. It may be that Audley had come into personal conflict with Clarence over the forfeited estates of the late earl of Wiltshire, from which Audley drew an annuity and where he may still have been constable of Wardour castle. On 26 July rebels defeated royal forces at Edgcote, and several of the King’s friends were captured and executed. Audley, whose whereabouts are not recorded, was not among those summoned to Parliament on 7 Sept. Reps. Lords’ Cttees. iv. 974. According to one account, at some point before Clarence and Warwick left England for France in March 1470 they took him and Anthony, the new Lord Rivers, captive and sent them to Wardour castle, ‘to be kepte oute of the way unto a tyme determinate, that they shulde have beene put to execucion’, but the following night a Dorset gentleman called John Thornhill with a good company of ‘hardy felowis’ rescued them. ‘Fragment relating to Edw. IV’, in T. Sprott, Chrons. ed. Hearne, 305.

Naturally enough, the government of the Readeption of Henry VI dropped Audley from commissions of the peace, although it did summon him to the Parliament called by writs dated 15 Oct. 1470. Reps. Lords’ Cttees. iv. 977. The return to England of the earl of Wiltshire’s brother John Butler, earl of Ormond, posed a threat to Audley of the loss of some of the estates he held by Edward IV’s grant; this can only have added to his relief when the Yorkist King returned to England in the following spring. He probably participated in Edward’s victories in the field. On 3 July 1471 he was among the lords in the Parliament chamber at Westminster who took oaths of allegiance to the prince of Wales, and two days later he received a grant for life of the office of master of the King’s harriers, with a salary of 1s. per day. CCR, 1468-76, no. 858; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 266, 444. He was exempted from the Act of Resumption passed in the long Parliament which assembled in October 1472. PROME, xiv. 38, 157. A regular member of the King’s Council in the 1470s, Audley was present at one such meeting at Stamford on 27 July 1473 when Laurence Booth, bishop of Durham, was appointed chancellor. CCR, 1468-76, no. 1164. Together with the bishop on 16 Dec. following he received a grant of the collation to the next vacant prebend within the King’s chapel of St. George at Windsor Castle, and it was his own half-brother, Edmund, whom they presented to the benefice shortly afterwards. Doubtless Audley’s links with the Crown were also helpful in securing Edmund’s promotion to the see of Rochester seven years later. CPR, 1467-77, p. 411; Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, i. 75-76. By then his own position had been formalized. On 16 Apr. 1474 he had been granted for life for his good service and attendances on the King’s person and in the council a yearly pension of as much as £100 paid from the customs and subsidies collected in the ports of Southampton and Poole. CPR, 1467-77, p. 440.

Yet Audley’s service was not to be restricted to the council chamber. On 5 Aug. 1474 he contracted to serve Edward IV in the duchy of Normandy and in France with a force of 19 men-at-arms and 200 archers. Payment for the first quarter’s wages (which included 4s. per day for himself) was to be made on the following 30 Jan., when he would be informed the time and place of muster. E101/71/5/956. It was at this stage, during the final session of the Parliament of 1472-5, which opened on 23 Jan. 1475, that Audley presented a petition to the King. Probably at the time of the Readeption, his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Audley, had committed such offences and misprisions against Edward (‘whereof your said suppliaunt is right sory, as God knowes’), that without the King’s special grace all his estates would have been forfeited and Sir Humphrey’s heirs disinherited for ever. As the King had intended to reward certain persons with these lands for their notable service in the field against the rebels, Audley had paid them 600 marks as compensation. He now requested Edward to grant him the wardship and marriage of Sir Humphrey’s son and heir, John, together with custody of six manors in Suffolk which Sir Humphrey had held when he died, and that if John died a minor while his sister Jane was still under age, that he could have her wardship and marriage too, in order to recoup his money. The Commons assented to the bill, the petition was granted, and at Audley’s request it was enrolled on the patent roll on 6 Feb. SC8/29/1450; PROME, xiv. 264-5; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 483-4. Meanwhile, negotiations with Brittany had borne fruit, and the duke of Brittany had finally overcome his caution to take a leading part in an English invasion of France. On 16 May a treaty bound him to supply 8,000 men, and three days later Audley and Gailiard de Dureford, Lord of Duras, were retained to join the duke with a force of 2,000 men. In June they were formally appointed captains of the force, empowered to treat in Edward’s name with any commonalties and persons willing to come to come to his obedience. Commissioners were instructed to take the muster of the army at convenient sites near Falmouth and Weymouth on the 23rd. E404/76/1/22; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 536, 542, 551. Nevertheless, it would appear that Audley’s men never went into action. Charles the Bold of Burgundy gave the Milanese ambassador to understand that Duke Francis refused to accept the English army he had requested, and as a consequence the English grew suspicious and abandoned the enterprise. Charles may also have been responsible for an apparently false story that Audley and his fellow commander had attacked St. Malo. Scofield, ii. 124, 127, 151; CSP Milan, i. 208. Letters of protection granted to men in his retinue indicate that Audley joined the King’s ‘great enterprise’, crossing to France in July. C76/159, mm. 12, 13.

In the years following the invasion of France, Audley continued to act as a councillor to Edward IV, and as a witness to important royal charters. CPR, 1477-85, p. 9. There is no doubting his friendship with the King. While Edward’s relations with his brother Clarence deteriorated, Audley quarreled with the duke too, so much so that the duke alleged in 1475 that Audley had personally entered his park at Canford, Dorset, and hunted his deer. Their dispute focused on the annuity charged on the manor of Haselbury which Audley had been awarded by the late earl of Wiltshire, whose forfeited estates had been granted to Clarence. Soon after the duke’s execution in 1478, Audley hastened to make distraint on property at Haselbury to exact the £26 13s. 4d. due to him for his annuity for two years. CP40/856, rot. 518; E159/257, recorda Easter rots. 20 (1)d, 20 (2). The annuity was guaranteed to him in the grant he received on 2 Mar. that year, giving him for life the office of steward of all the lordships in Dorset previously held by Clarence, together with the stewardship of all lands in the county in the King’s hands because of the minority of the duke’s son Edward, and the constableships of the castles of Wardour and Corfe. CPR, 1477-85, p. 68. His pre-eminence in Dorset was also given strength by his role as steward on the estates of the King’s mother.

Audley was on good terms with King Edward’s friend William, Lord Hastings, and supported him in the matter of obtaining papal dispensations for the marriage of his son and heir to the heiress Mary Hungerford, Baroness Botreaux. At a hearing in 1478 before the bishops of Lincoln and Lichfield at Ashby la Zouche he explained that the couple were indeed related, but said that bonds of peace and friendship between their parents, kinsmen and friends would be better preserved and increased by the marriage. CPL, xiii (2), 689-90. Following the King’s award to bring to an end a dispute between Audley’s nephew John, Lord Cobham, and Robert Palmer and his wife Joan (Cobham’s stepmother), Audley was one of the feoffees of the disputed estates appointed by the King in 1479. CCR, 1476-85, no. 748. Not long afterwards he received from the royal wardrobe a gift of two yards of cloth of gold, crimson upon satin ground, ‘for covering of a peire of brygandyns’. Harl. 4780, f. 47v. In what was to prove to be Edward IV’s last Parliament held at the beginning of 1483 Audley was exempted from the workings of the Act of Resumption, in particular with regard to his post of master of the harriers. PROME, xiv. 420-1.

Edward IV died in the night of 9 Apr. at Westminster palace. On the instructions of the Council, Audley went with Lord Berkeley early in the morning to tell the mayor of London of the King’s death, asking him to ensure that peace was kept in the City. A few days later he was present when Edward’s body was conveyed into Westminster abbey, and then he processed with the hearse to Charing and on to Syon abbey, before riding to Windsor, where he stood watch over night and then participated in the funeral ceremony. If he was reluctant to accept Richard, duke of Gloucester, as King in place of the prince to whom he had sworn an oath in 1471, he did not show it publically. Robed in crimson velvet, he rode in the procession before Richard’s coronation on 6 July, and acted as carver at the celebratory banquet. Coronation of Ric. III ed. Sutton and Hammond, 13, 172, 251; LP Ric. III and Hen. VII ed. Gairdner, i. 6-10. Furthermore, he accompanied Richard III on a visit to Oxford soon afterwards, being welcomed with him at Magdalen on 24 July. W.D. Macray, Reg. Magdalen Coll. n.s. i. 12. Even so, Richard considered it necessary to take measures to secure his allegiance; he could not look to a previously amicable relationship with Audley to ensure his loyalty. Indeed, four days before the coronation he had caused Audley to be bound in the huge sum of £5,000 to give him legal possession of the castle and manor of Llandovery in south Wales before the following Martinmas. If he did so and proved to be a faithful liege the recognizance would be voided. Llandovery and its commotes of Hirfryn and Perfedd had been in Audley’s family for nearly 200 years; but now Audley was being forced to part with them. He duly transferred possession to the King, but not until October 1484. CCR, 1476-85, nos. 1218, 1347; J.E. Lloyd, Hist. Carms. i. 234.

Whether or not this heavy-handed action was justified, Audley’s kinsmen had come under suspicion for joining in the rebellion against Richard III in the autumn of 1483: his half-brother Thomas Audley was listed among the Dorset rebels, and his son-in-law (Sir) John Wingfield† was sufficiently implicated as to be required to hand over part of his inheritance to the King’s friends in order to escape attainder. Audley himself was removed from the benches of seven counties, so it looks as if he was thought to have been involved, too. On 9 Dec. he was summoned to the Parliament due to be held at Westminster six weeks later, and on 29 Dec. he procured a general pardon, at the same time as his son Sir James did likewise. Perhaps through their action Thomas escaped attainder in the Parliament. CCR, 1476-85, no. 1152; CPR, 1477-85, p. 415; BL Harl. MS. 433 ed. Horrox and Hammond, ii. 31; C67/51, m. 1; Suss. Arch. Collns. lvi. 90f; R. Horrox, Ric. III, 284-5. Nevertheless, Lord Audley overcame the King’s suspicions, and although he lost his office as master of the royal harriers, on 5 Mar. 1484 he was granted for life for his attendance as a member of the Council an annuity of £100 from the customs collected in the port of London. Presumably this replaced the similar annuity granted him by Edward IV. He continued to receive other fees and annuities awarded him by the late King. CPR, 1477-85, p. 384; BL Harl. MS. 433, iii. 192, 198, 206, 213. It would appear that although Richard III chose not to augment Audley’s influence in the localities by grants of land or office, he did value his advice. Indeed, when the treasurer of the Exchequer, John Wood III*, died that autumn, Audley was elevated in his place, and remained in office until the end of the reign. CPR, 1476-85, p. 488. It is unclear why he was removed from his offices in Dorset on 30 June 1485, to benefit George Neville, esquire of the body, who had done the King good service against the rebels. CPR, 1477-85, p. 549.

Audley may have fought for Richard III at Bosworth, Bp. Percy’s Folio MS ed. Hales and Furnivall, Ballads and Romances, iii. 244-5. and when writs of summons to Henry VII’s first Parliament went out on 15 Sept. he was excluded. Even so, the new King offered him a general pardon on 18 Nov., while the Parliament was in progress, and conceded that the Act of Resumption should not prejudice to the grants and letters patent made to him by Edward IV under the seal of the earldom of March. Cavill, 111; CPR, 1485-94, p. 66; PROME, xv. 264. Furthermore, Audley was allowed to recover Llandovery, so that the lordship was back in his possession by the time of his death, though now held as a feudal tenant of Arthur, prince of Wales. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 601. Although he was replaced as treasurer and never again held such a high office of state, Audley continued in his role as councillor to the monarch, and was present in December 1489 when Anne, countess of Warwick, appeared before the King in Chancery and acknowledged the fine whereby she had freely given up her inheritance to King Henry and his male heirs. His services as a diplomat were also employed again, this time, in June 1490, to treat with France and Brittany for perpetual peace. CCR, 1485-1500, no. 474.

According to a valor made in 1497, in Audley’s final years his estates in 13 counties and London produced gross annual revenues of £1,564. SC11/828. His post mortem only records estates worth £325 clear. Another measure of his wealth is the value of over £1,242 he placed on the huge quantity of plate allegedly stolen from his house in Southampton in Jan. 1463: KB9/311/55; KB27/819, rex rot. 16. His standing is indicated by the marriage he had arranged for his son and heir, Sir James, to Margaret, daughter of Sir Richard Darell of Lillingstone, for her mother was Margaret Beaufort, one of the daughters of Edmund, duke of Somerset, and a cousin of the new King’s mother. In 1487 he made settlements of certain of his estates in Herefordshire and Shropshire on Sir James and his second wife, Joan, daughter of Fulk Bourgchier, the late Lord Fitzwaryn. CP, i. 342; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 601, 604, 646. Audley died in the autumn of 1490, probably on 26 Sept. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 591, 601-3, 613. Two inqs. give different dates: 22 Sept. and 6 Oct. Although the attainders of the earl of Wiltshire and his brothers had been reversed in Henry VII’s first Parliament, and in 1486 Thomas, earl of Ormond, had granted his recovered manor of Vachery in Shere to (Sir) Reynold Bray†, Audley had continued to live there, paying Bray compensation in the form of an annuity of £10, and he chose to be buried in Shere church. VCH Surr. iii. 113-14, 120. His tomb was dismantled in the 18th century, and only the upper half of the monumental brass remains, showing a man in plate armour. His heir Lord James was granted special livery and licence to enter his father’s lands without proof of age on 10 Feb. 1491. CPR, 1485-94, p. 337. Although he indented to do military service to Henry VII, E101/72/5/1139. James subsequently turned traitor, and as leader of the Cornish insurrection he encamped with the rebels at Blackheath. He was taken prisoner on 24 June 1497 and beheaded four days later on Tower Hill. PROME, xvi. 379-87; CP, i. 342-3. His mother, the widow of our MP, made her will on 11 Nov. following at Bermondsey abbey where she wished to be buried. She requested prayers for her two late husbands and for her son, and asked her executors to hold the residue of her estate for her grandson John Audley, if he should obtain the King’s pardon. However, it was not to be until 1512 that John was restored in blood and honours by Henry VIII. PCC 23 Horne (PROB11/11, f. 189); CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 148. The heir to the Roger estates was Anne’s son Henry Roger.