On the fall of the latter in 1529, he was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the same year Speaker of the House of Commons, presiding over the famous assembly styled the Reformation Parliament, which abolished the papal jurisdiction.

He supported the king's divorce from Catherine and the marriage with Anne Boleyn; and presided at the trials of Fisher and More in 1535, at which his conduct and evident intention to secure a conviction has been criticised by some.

[4] 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.

[5] 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.

[4] 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.