AUDLEY, Lewis (1620-70), of West Purley, Surr.

In 1659 Audley indignantly and accurately repudiated the charge of not being a gentleman: his family had been recognised as armigerous in the visitation of Huntingdonshire in 1613 and his ancestor Henry Audley had been granted the manor of Great Gransden, between St Neots and Cambridge, at the dissolution of the monasteries.25VCH Hunts. ii. 297-8; Vis. Hunts. (Cam. Soc. xliii), 54. A younger son, he stayed at Cambridge long enough to proceed MA and was ordained deacon at Peterborough in December 1641.26Al. Cant. But, as Thomas Kelsey* explained approvingly later to the House of Commons, while Audley was ‘a scholar’ and ‘might at first exercise as a minister’, he had ‘found himself unfit’, and ‘rather than to be unprofitable’ had decided to ‘forbear the calling’.27Burton’s Diary, iii. 40. Instead he joined the army – perhaps, since in January 1659 he referred to his ‘18 years’ service’, even before the outbreak of civil war.28Burton’s Diary, iii. 38.

In December 1645 Audley was appointed captain-lieutenant in the regiment of Sir Thomas Fairfax* in the New Model army. Although the parliamentary commissioners despatched to the army to persuade its officers and soldiers to engage themselves for service in Ireland listed him on 26 April 1647 among those willing to accept, he and others had not yet marched to the rendezvous.29Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 465. It had already become clear that he had serious reservations about the assignment. The previous week there were reports that he had been undermining the commissioners’ efforts, saying that those who ‘engaged for Ireland’s affairs were not worthy to wipe his horse[ʼs] tail’ or ‘to come near to’ it. These Audley (with supporting witnesses) countered by explaining that he was ‘really disposed to the service’ in principle, but ‘as things were, was not satisfied to engage now’; once the ‘obstruction was taken away’ (probably the suspicion that the Presbyterians were using the Irish campaign as a ruse to neutralize the army’s power in England and bolster their own power in Parliament), he ‘should be loath that those that had subscribed should come near his horse[‘s] tail for forwardness’.30Clarke Pprs. i. 10; Moderate Intelligencer no. 110 (15-22 Apr. 1647), 1031 (E.385.1).

Audley soon emerged as a vocal and confident spokesman for army solidarity and robust action in the face of external threats, but also for internal transparency and consultation. He signed the army’s articles of grievances on 15 May.31Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. 321, 323. Participating the next day in discussions in Saffron Walden church, he was not afraid of identifying discrepancies between the different narratives of superior officers.32Clarke Pprs. i. 54. On 21 June he was the first signatory of A copie of a letter sent from the agitators, drafted at St Alban’s and addressed to the navy, offering further justification of The Agreement of the People and exhorting sailors to make common cause with those in service ashore. Given the rhetoric of his other utterances during these months, he was conceivably its chief author, responsible for expressing the profound disappointment at the course the war had taken and the claim that

we have no other aims, but that justice might act in all its parts and to all its ends, as elating [i.e. bringing joy] to all estates and persons in the kingdom, that the yokes of oppression might be taken off the necks of all and justice equally distributed to all, and the rights of any (though now detained from them) restored.

This goal would be shared by all ‘rational men who love justice and hate tyranny’ and who ‘with us do hate and scorn to be kept any longer under bondage, having purchased our freedom at so dear a race [i.e. rate]’.33A copie of a letter sent from the agitators of his Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax's armie (London, 1647), 1, 8-9 (E.393.33).

Audley was present at the army’s council of war at Reading on 16 July, and participated in at least two sessions of the debates at Putney in late October and early November, when he was the junior of two officers representing Fairfax’s regiment.34Clarke Pprs. i 176, 436. By the autumn he was clearly frustrated at continuing divisions and lack of constructive action. ‘It is idleness that hath begot this rust, and this gangrene amongst us’ ; ‘I could wish we might all rise, and go to our duties, and see our work in hand’ (29 Oct.).35Clarke Pprs. i 288, 331. His own unruly tongue – a characteristic fault he confessed 12 years later – was a cause of distracting controversy, but he explained that he had meant no offence.36Burton’s Diary, iii. 38. He had criticised not only the chairman, Oliver Cromwell*, and Commissary-general Henry Ireton*, but also ‘every man that would dispute till we have our throats cut’. Yet he

would die in any place in England, in asserting that it is the right of every free-born man to elect, according to the rule, Quod omnibus spectat, ab omnibus tractari debet, that which concerns all ought to be debated by all.

Apparently clarifying that this principle extended to parliamentary elections, he added that he ‘knew no reason why that law should oblige when he himself had no finger in appointing the law-giver’.37Clarke Pprs. i. 340. In any case, one potential point of contention he considered already settled beyond dispute: on 1 November he observed that ‘it appeared by what you spake the other night’ that the king should have the veto on legislation allowed him in the less radical army document, The Heads of the Proposals, ‘taken away’.38Clarke Pprs. i. 390.

In a sign of commitment, Audley seems to have postponed plans for personal advancement in order to engage in these debates. On 8 September he was granted a licence to marry Mary Hawtrey, widow of a City merchant, at St Bartholomew the Less in London.39Foster, Mar. Lics. However, the wedding took place on 9 December in the Surrey parish where he acquired an estate at West Purley once held by his wife’s father.40Surr. Arch. Coll. vii. 9, 18-19; Manning, Bray, Surr. ii. 572. At that point he apparently left his regiment to immerse himself in Surrey affairs, perhaps from the outset with a commission from the Derby House Committee.41Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. 325. Early in July 1648 he was the Committee’s ‘man on the ground’, with the rank of major, as rumours circulated of an imminent royalist rising.42SP21/9, f. 211v. On the 8th Audley recounted to the Committee how he, Sir Michael Livesay* and Major Robert Gibbons had successfully quashed the insurgency.43L. Awdeley, A True Relation (1648, E.451.30). Later that month Major Audley was added to the Surrey committee for sequestrations, while in August he joined the commission of the peace.44CJ v. 650b; C231/6, p. 121. Subsequently he collected other local offices, including that of captain in charge of the Surrey militia during the invasion scare of August 1650.45A. and O; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 509.

None the less, Audley retained his links to the national army, and he joined Thomas Rainborowe’s regiment as major in June 1648, briefly served with Richard Deane’s regiment in 1649 and soon afterwards moved again to that of his old comrade, Robert Gibbons.46Wanklyn, New Model Army i. 101; ii. 69. He was present at central army councils on 16 November and 21 December 1648.47Clarke Pprs. ii. 270-1; B. Taft, ‘Voting lists of the Council of Officers’, BIHR lii. 148. Late in 1650 he recruited a troop in Surrey for the campaign in Scotland, and accompanied it north, but soon returned to fufill other military responsibilities, perhaps involving recruiting in Kent.48CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 350, 352, 475, 481; 1651, pp. 29, 93. He was probably the Major Audley summoned to Parliament with others in January 1651 to explain their alleged role in impeding an official who arrived at Dover Castle to seize the goods of the governor, Col. Algernon Sydney*, who was facing court martial.49CJ vi. 526b, 529a. If so, this episode did not noticeably interrupt his career. In the spring and summer he sent to Scotland consignments of ammunition and recruits destined for Gibbons, now promoted to colonel; in the process he was handling large sums of money.50CSP Dom. 1651, p. 111; SP25/101, ff. 209, 281; SP25/102, f. 20; SP18/20, f. 63; SP18/21, f. 167. In December he took a company there himself, but by the end of February 1652 was described as ‘late major of Colonel Gibbons’ regiment’.51SP25/103, f. 29; SP25/66, ff. 45, 382v-383; SP18/22, f. 196

Using his arrears of pay, in the early 1650s Audley bought estates close to his birthplace in Cambridgeshire, including the king’s house at Royston, and at East Hagbourne in Berkshire, confiscated from Lord Craven.52Archaeologia, xl. 133; VCH Cambs. ix. 197; VCH Berks. iii. 478. However, he continued to live in West Purley and to be active in Surrey affairs, even after the death of his wife Mary in 1655. In February 1656 he married a second Mary at St Clement Danes in the City of London; they had several children baptized at the parish church of West Purley at Sanderstead.53Surr. Arch. Coll. vii. 9, 18-19. Two months later, at the nomination of the retiring incumbent, Col. John White – perhaps a kinsman of his fellow agitator from Fairfax’s regiment – he was appointed a clerk of the ordnance, thereby formalising the procurement role he had performed earlier.54CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 330.

Experience of local and national office, together with his military record, probably made Audley a highly acceptable candidate from the government’s point of view in the parliamentary elections of that year. The major was returned as one of six county Members for Surrey. During the first session of the Parliament he received 31 appointments to a variety of committees and was twice a teller. His numerous contributions to debate reveal that he had not lost his earlier energy and radicalism, and that his military experience and his Oxford education gave him confidence and credibility.

On the issue that dominated the first session – the alleged blasphemies of James Naylor – Audley combined hostility to heresy informed by his clerical training with compassion for the perpetrator. Placed on the committee to consider the case (31 Oct.), he made several contributions to the debate in the House in December.55CJ vii. 448a. He expressed reluctance to proceed in the absence of specifically targeted legislation and recommended in the meantime consulting the protector – perhaps in the knowledge that he was likely to advise clemency (5 Dec.).56Burton’s Diary, i. 39. He did not doubt that Naylor was ‘guilty of blasphemy’, considering ‘no man so possessed with the devil as this person is’ and that ‘God has forsaken him’. But he opposed ‘passing this matter in the lump’: the offence should be carefully dissected and defined (6 Dec.).57Burton’s Diary, i. 54. As in the law courts, the defendant should have the opportunity to ‘recant’: he hoped there was ‘nobody here but desires his reformation, rather than otherwise to punish him’ (17 Dec.).58Burton’s Diary, i. 163. Even after the Commons had reached a judgement he offered what Thomas Burton* described as ‘a very fierce speech on Naylor’s behalf’, taking his colleagues to task for denying ‘this person’ a hearing at the bar of the House: ‘were he never so wicked, you ought to give him the liberty of an Englishman’. By not leaving him to the normal course of law, a dangerous precedent had been set (26 Dec.).59Burton’s Diary, i. 246.

It was not that Audley was indulgent towards sin and misdemeanour. Boring the tongue, he asserted, was ‘an ordinary punishment for swearing’; he ‘could freely give [his] consent that [Quakers] should be whipped’.60Burton’s Diary, i. 23, 154. He was on committees preparing bills addressing abuses in alehouses (29 Sept.) and punishing ‘immoderate living’ (17 June 1657); he was a teller in favour of the bill for discovering and repressing recusancy (27 June).61Burton’s Diary, ii. 310; CJ vii. 430a, 559b, 577a. On Christmas Day 1656 he joined Major-general William Packer* and Sir Gilbert Pykeringe* in condemning the ‘superstitious observance’ that had kept MPs from the House, closed shops and emptied the streets of Westminster, and in supporting a bill for the abolition of holy days.62Burton’s Diary, i. 229.

Yet he was evidently disinclined to hound sinners, ignore due process or indulge in indiscriminate and unlimited repression. Appointed to the committee for settling Wyggeston’s Hospital in Leicester (9 Dec.), he observed that it was ‘truly said that since popery was abolished, charity has left the land’; where the problems associated with such foundations were ‘merely superstitious, I would have them reformed, but not taken away.’63CJ vii. 466a; Burton’s Diary, i. 84. When measures against vagabonds were debated (5 Dec.), he was concerned not to leave too much to the discretion of potentially harsh local authorities: ‘If you leave it in the power of justices to judge who shall be wanderers, for [aught] I know I myself may be whipped, if I be found but ten miles from my own house, unless the justice of peace will allow my excuse.’64Burton’s Diary, i. 22-3. Nominated to committees to investigate abuses in writs (25 Sept.) and the case of George Rodney versus John Cole (22 Nov.), which exposed flaws in chancery proceedings and encouraged criticism of its officers, he advocated the formulation of a set of clear and robust questions to answer: ‘you ought not to charge your judges in this blind manner; it is not regular, and too light a matter to charge them upon’.65CJ vii. 428a, 457b; Burton’s Diary, i. 304.

Apparently, Audley had not lost sight of his earlier perspectives. When some Londoners organised a call for the remission of Naylor’s sentence (23 Dec. 1656), he championed ‘the right of the people of England to petition this House’.66Burton’s Diary, i. 215. He seconded Major-general Edward Whalley*’s contention that England’s ‘very disproportionable’ assessments should be made more equitable and transparent (12 June 1657).67Burton’s Diary, ii. 230. It is thus likely that he brought such opinions to the committees on which he sat to discuss and draft formulae for political settlement (most notably relating to the Petition and Advice, 6, 9 Apr.) and for ‘the better chosing of people in places of public trust’ (15 June), although he may have been less generous to the Scots and Irish than he was to his fellow-countrymen.68CJ vii. 441b, 499b, 502a, 520b, 521b, 557b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 213. He was probably not a major player in this area, but he was vigilant on both detail (for example, whether the chief magistrate should be empowered to appoint those who would regulate the ministry of the church (24 Apr.) and general principle (the problem of successive parliaments undoing or not recognising the legislation of their predecessors, 24 June).69Burton’s Diary, ii. 21, 280, 285. On the latter occasion he declared unequivocably that he ‘was against the House of Lords’; in any new second chamber he opposed the choice ‘hereditary lords’ and ‘any of those who went to Oxford’. If men who happened to be peers were selected, he proposed that they ‘sign some such recognition as’ one which approved ‘of the death of the late king’, ‘laying aside his family’ and ‘taking away the House of Lords’.70Burton’s Diary, ii. 300.

Understandably, Audley was also an army man, concerned to protect the integrity of military forces and the rewards individuals, including himself, had gained for their service. He was a teller for the minority who supported Major-general John Disbrowe’s* bill for a decimation tax on royalists in order to maintain a permanent militia (29 Jan.).71CJ vii. 483b. Placed at the beginning of the Parliament on the committee for Irish affairs (23 Sept. 1656), he subsequently sat on committees establishing entitlement to land there.72CJ vii. 427a, 477a, 529a. Among several appointments relating to individual or local petitions and private settlements, was one to confirm the privileges of the Isle of Ely, where he had bought land (28 Nov.).73CJ vii. 460b, 468a, 484a, 501a, 545a. Having purchased an estate formerly belonging to Lord Craven, he moved to postpone any consideration of the peer’s petition to Parliament (29 May 1657).74Burton’s Diary, ii. 158.

In the second session Audley continued to be associated with reform. As a justice of the peace he had celebrated marriages at his house; in January 1658 he sat on a committee discussing a new marriages act.75Surr. Arch. Coll. vii. 10; CJ vii. 581a. He had previously been nominated to consider petitions from Oxford University and from civil lawyers respectively regarding the preservation of their privileges and their discipline (22. Nov, 1 Dec. 1656; 27 Jan. 1657).76CJ vii. 457a, 462b, 483b. On 22 January 1658 he was named first to a committee to curb non-residence by heads of colleges in the universities.77CJ vii. 581a. Here as elsewhere, he had precise ideas about how legislation should be framed, both in general and in particular. He disliked all preambles: ‘a good law may stand of itself’, while the necessary ‘liberty’ of certain heads to be absent for the purposes of official visits to associated schools should ‘be limited to forty days, or the like’.78Burton’s Diary, ii. 38-9. Previously involved in discussions on how to provide for ministers in Yarmouth and in Newport, Isle of Wight (19 Nov., 26 Dec. 1656), he was added to the committee for the maintenance of ministers (23 Jan. 1658) and showed himself keen to promote practical measures, especially in Wales and the north (27 Jan.).79CJ vii. 455a, 475b, 581b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 373. He was also added to a committee for uniting parish churches in his native county of Huntingdonshire (3 Feb.).80CJ vii. 591a.

As an officer of the ordnance, that autumn Audley participated in Cromwell’s funeral procession.81Burton’s Diary, ii. 522. In elections for a new Parliament, with a reversion to only two seats for Surrey, he sought a place at Gatton, not far from his estate at Purley. Having understood, as he later told the House, that there had been a double return resulting in others being preferred, he presented himself at Westminster on 27 January 1659 to register a complaint about the presiding sheriff.82CJ vii. 597a; Burton’s Diary, iii. 37. An encounter in the hall with the successful candidate, Edward Bysshe II*, and then his partner Thomas Turgis*, developed into an exchange of insults and threatened to degenerate into violence. The cause of Bysshe and Turgis was taken up by leading civilian Members Richard Knightley* and Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, who informed the Commons that Audley had used ‘very uncivil and provoking language’ and ‘had dared Mr Bysshe to go into the fields and fight with him’.83CJ vii. 595a; Burton’s Diary, iii. 15n. Summoned to the bar on 2 February, Audley was informed of a complaint of ‘the great violation of the privileges of the House’, although, in a notable concession, he was not required to kneel. He attempted to submit his answer in writing, patently nervous that his tongue and his temper would betray him into giving offence, but this was not accepted. He then admitted that he had been ‘provoked’ to insulting ‘languages’ and acknowledged himself ‘accidentally, not professedly, an offender to this House’, but denied he had ever issued a challenge to a duel. The provocation, he declared, had been extreme. Not only had he been dubbed no gentleman, but he had also been called ‘a turncoat’: ‘I was never guilty of being a turncoat – that sticks with me’. Pleading his many years of service to the Parliament, he asked pardon and leave to lodge his petition against the election.84CJ vii. 597a, 597b; Burton’s Diary, iii. 37-8.

In the long debate that ensued, the chamber divided roughly along civilian and military lines, with Knightley and Hesilrige leading the prosecution and those who had encountered him in the army (who detected a general slur of ingratitude to their kind) or in local administration constituting the defence.85Burton’s Diary, iii. 38-44. Finally the House decided that Audley had indeed called Bysshe ‘a rascal’ and ‘an unworthy fellow’, and Turgis ‘a stinking base fellow and a shit-breech’. This ‘abusive and opprobious language’ constituted breach of privilege, for which Audley, called in for sentence and this time made to kneel, was committed as a prisoner to the Tower during pleasure. An additional motion to have him removed from the Surrey commission of the peace was defeated, a small majority of MPs persuaded by arguments such as those of Carew Ralegh*, who asserted the unblemished reputation of his ‘countryman’ on the bench.86CJ vii. 597b; Burton’s Diary, iii. 41, 43-5.

Five days later, following presentation of his petition for release by William Wheler*, Audley was discharged. Several of those who had formerly advocated his imprisonment, including Bysshe and Turgis, had had a change of heart. This was partly because they reckoned that, by virtue of his ordnance office, he had ‘a house and good accommodation’ at the Tower which tended to remove the punishment, and partly because they had realised that, since he was still technically ‘in orders’, they had grounds for contesting his right to sit in Parliament at all.87CJ vii. 601a; Burton’s Diary, iii. 85-6. It is unclear whether Audley pursued his claim, but perhaps there was some behind-the-scenes bargaining: it was the end of his parliamentary career.

During the summer of 1659, Audley played an important role in suppressing insurrection in Surrey and was added as a militia commissioner in Cambridgeshire.88SP25/98, f. 26v; Bodl. Tanner 51, f. 107; CJ vii. 725a, 772b; A. and O; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 563. However, probably because of co-operation with the committee of safety during the ‘interruption’ of Parliament in the autumn and perhaps also because of continued animosity from the likes of Heselrige, he was dropped from the Cambridgeshire commission on 21 January 1660 and lost his office as clerk of the ordnance before 23 April.89CJ vii. 818a; SP18/221, f. 100. His local appointments were not renewed at the Restoration. Over the next few years he also forfeited most of the lands he had acquired, including – presumably because of debt – West Purley.90VCH Surr. iv. 240; VCH Cambs. ix. 197; VCH Berks. iii. 478; Archaeologia, xl. 133.

Audley appears to have retired to Cambridgeshire. He died there just before Christmas 1670, leaving a small estate mortgaged to his first wife’s son or step-son, John Hawtrey. His sole surviving son from his second marriage, Renatus, was then only nine years old.91Reade, Audley Pedigrees, i. 36; PROB6/45, f. 171. No descendant is known to have sat in Parliament.