[1][2] The story as given by John Foxe (who wrongly ascribes it to 1510) tells that Chamber met Thomas Cromwell on his way at Antwerp and, doubting his own capacity to complete the task, persuaded him to accompany him to Italy.
The Boston records, which include a fee for Cromwell, show that he returned after a comparatively short stay in Rome and that Chamber remained there for a further 16 weeks to finalize the details.
[10] When proving the will in April 1529, Chamber as attorney for the executors brought a common plea in London against Ambrose Borough of Boston, yeoman, for a debt to the estate.
He also held lands and tenements in Great Stanmore, Middlesex (where St Bartholomew's held the manor from St Albans Abbey), which tenantright he left to his widow Sybell for her to pay the issues and profits to their religious daughter Anne: Sybell and Richard Warde were the executors, and Prior William and Geoffrey Chamber the overseers.
[19] In that year 1533 Robert Tomlinson, Alderman, of Our Lady's Guild at Boston, wrote to Cromwell that he had a gift of wildfowl for the King in connection with Anne Boleyn's coronation: "Please let Geoffrey Chamber know what you will have done with them", he asked.
[24] Following the enactment of the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535, which passed parliament in February 1535/36, the Court of Augmentations was established in April to administer the monastic properties and revenues, with Richard Rich as its Chancellor.
Geoffrey Chamber was appointed its Surveyor and Receiver-General of the King's purchased lands, a position he held until 1544,[25] by which time the greater monasteries had also been closed.
When it was removed from the wall it was found to contain mechanisms, wires and sticks of wood by which the figure could be made to bow, the eyes to move as if alive, and the lower lip to open and shut as if speaking.
[31] Chamber reported these findings in a letter to Cromwell,[32] and took the figure to London where it was shown about the Court, and afterwards it was made to stand in front of Paul's Cross as if doing penance, before being broken up and cast into a fire.
As propaganda it assisted the cause of the reformists considerably, but there is little to suggest that it was really used with an intention to deceive, and appears to have been given to the abbey by a stranger who had made it rather as a novelty than as anything miraculous.
The story of Chamber's late tenure of Stanmore, and of his misfortunes after the death of Cromwell in 1540, was told by his son Edward, when an old man in 1593, as follows: "My father was Receiver General of Henry VIII's purchased lands in England: but demanding £100 debt due to him by the Master of the Augmentation Court, was by him cast into prison for a debt of £2,200 to the King, and his sureties were caused to pay £2,100 forfeit.
[36] Geoffrey was associated with Alice his wife when the manor of Great Stanmore, together with the advowson of the church, passed by Fine at Easter 30 Henry VIII.
[41] If such was the nature of the £100 debt which Chamber claimed from the "Master of the Court", it appears that Richard Rich, Chancellor of the Augmentations, took drastic steps to dissociate himself from the matter.
Geoffrey's survey of manors received from John St Leger is dated December 1542;[43] in the Hilary term of 1543 he acted as attorney in common actions for recovery of debt,[44] and he attended a parliament of the Inner Temple, serving as one of the Marshals, on 7 June 1543.
[45] On 15 May 1544 George Wright, formerly a clerk in the Court of Augmentations, was promoted to the joint offices of Surveyor and Receiver of exchanged and purchased lands, as successor to Chamber, and remained in this post until 1547.
[46] In June 1546 Sir Francis Ascugh was obliged to sell lands to the King in lieu of £300 which his father (probably Sir William Ayscough of Stallingborough, died 1540, father of Anne Askew[47]) owed as a surety for Chamber: in July Thomas Holland of Swineshead, Lincolnshire was, in consideration of his poverty, allowed to make a small annual payment for a similar obligation.
Various premises in St Sepulchre's adjacent to those in tenure of Geoffrey Chamber, all of which had lately belonged to him and had been in the hands of Peter de Gamboa, are mentioned in some detail in a grant of 22 June 1550.
In 1568 Thomas Batton of Burringham, Lincolnshire identified himself as "mainpernor of Geoffrey Chamber, late Particular Receiver of the Court of Augmentations" (suggesting that he was another of the sureties).