as Lord Steward at the trials of Henry Pole, Lord Montacute, and of the Marquess of Exeter. In 1539, inclining to the Protestant Reformation, he made himself the King's instrument in enforcing religious conformity, and in the passing of the Six Articles Act. Other activities On 24 April 1540 he was made a Knight of the Garter, and subsequently managed the attainder of Thomas Cromwell, and the dissolution of Henry's marriage with Anne of Cleves. This was despite having previously been a strong ally of Cromwell. In 1542 he warmly supported the privileges of the Commons, but his conduct was inspired as usual by subservience to the court, which desired to secure a subsidy, and his opinion that the arrest was a flagrant contempt has been questioned by good authority. He received several grants of monastic estates, including Holy Trinity Priory in Aldgate, London and Walden Abbey, Essex, where his grandson, Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, built Audley End, doubtless named after him. In 1542 he endowed and re-established Buckingham College, Cambridge, under the new name of the College of St Mary Magdalene (commonly Magdalene College), and ordained in the statutes that his heirs, "the possessors of the late monastery of Walden" should be Visitors of Magdalene College in perpetuum. The power to appoint the Master of the College was vested in the Visitor until an amendment to the College Statutes in 2012. The arms of Magdalene are derived from his. A Booke of Orders for the Warre both by Sea and Land (Harleian MS. 297, 144) is attributed to his authorship. Marriages and progeny Lord Audley married twice: Firstly to Christina (or Margaret) Barnardiston, a daughter of Sir Thomas Barnardiston (died 1503), of Kedington, Suffolk; Secondly to Elizabeth Grey, a daughter of Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, by whom he had two daughters, including: Margaret Audley, who married as her second husband Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, by whom her eldest son was Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, 1st Baron Howard de Walden, created Baron Howard de Walden in 1597 and Earl of Suffolk in 1603. Death and burial He resigned the great seal on 21 April 1544, and died on 30 April and was buried at Saffron Walden, where he had prepared for himself a splendid tomb. As he died without male progeny his barony became extinct at his death. One of his daughters,