Audley End was one of the greatest houses of early 17th-century England. In about 1605–14 Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, took an earlier house created by his grandfather Lord Audley on the site of Walden Abbey, and rebuilt it on the scale of a royal palace. Robert Adam transformed this house for Sir John Griffin Griffin in the 1760s, while Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown remodelled the grounds, to create one of England’s finest landscape gardens.

Thomas Audley, 1st Baron Audley of Walden KG, PC, KS, JP (c. 1488 – 30 April 1544), was an English barrister and judge who served as Lord Chancellor of England from 1533 to 1544.

Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, KG, PC (24 August 1561 – 28 May 1626), of Audley End House in the parish of Saffron Walden in Essex, and of Suffolk House[1] near Westminster, a member of the House of Howard, was the second son of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, by his second wife Margaret Audley, the daughter and eventual sole heiress of Thomas Audley, 1st Baron Audley of Walden, of Audley End.

Ownership of Audley’s house descended to Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, who was executed in 1572 for conspiring with Mary, Queen of Scots, against Elizabeth I (r.1558–1603). The duke’s second son, Thomas (1561–1626), redeemed the family reputation, gaining Elizabeth's confidence and being created Baron Howard de Walden and a Knight of the Garter.

On the accession of James VI of Scotland as James I of England in 1603, Howard was made Earl of Suffolk and appointed Lord Chamberlain. In 1614 he became Lord Treasurer, but four years later was convicted of corruption, extortion and bribery – the embezzled money had helped to pay off his debts. He and the countess escaped with a heavy fine and retired in disgrace to Audley End, the main cause of their financial problems.

He was born John Griffin Whitwell, the son of William Whitwell by his wife Anne Griffin, sister and sole heiress of Edward Griffin, 3rd Baron Griffin of Braybrooke, and granddaughter of James Howard, 3rd Earl of Suffolk and 3rd Baron Howard de Walden (1619–1689).

On Lord Howard’s death Audley End and his subsidiary title of Baron Braybrooke passed to Richard Aldworth Neville (1750–1825), a descendant of Lady Portsmouth's first husband. Neville’s eldest son, Richard (1783–1858; from 1825 3rd Baron Braybrooke), a scholar and antiquarian, embarked on the last major reworking of Audley End, after taking over the house from his father in 1820.

The 3rd Lord Braybrooke’s aim was to recover the Jacobean character of the house. Surviving 17th-century elements were repaired and stripped of paint, and new work in the same style was added, but pragmatically much of Adam’s work was retained. His ground-floor reception rooms (except the library) were adapted to form the new state apartment, and a new suite of reception rooms was created in its place on the first floor of the south wing.

A few observations upon the arrangement of the following pages may be necessary, though no uniform plan in this respect is prescribed to topographers. The reader, then, should bear in mind, that the History of Audley End was originally my only object, some of the sheets having been printed off before I had contemplated extending the work to the remainder of the parish of Walden, and even at a later period it was supposed that a few supplementary notices would be sufficient for the purpose