plaints of grievances presented to the king personally as he passed from place to place. In the autumn he signed, with other councillors, a form of ratification of the treaty of the Moore, which it was agreed to demand from Louise of Savoy, regent of France. At this time also he seems to have been one of the officers called ‘chamberlains of the receipt of the exchequer,’ in which capacity he superintended the cutting of tallies, and also had the custody of original treaties and other diplomatic documents committed to him.
On 5 May 1526 he witnessed a charter at Westminster. About this time he and Sir Thomas Wyatt built a banqueting-house for the king at Greenwich, and accounts of banquets and revels audited by him as controller of the household are occasionally met with. In June 1527, just before Wolsey's great mission to France, he delivered to the cardinal's secretary, Stephen Gardiner [q. v.], out of the exchequer certain boxes containing a number of international treaties and other evidences. He received Wolsey at Rochester on his way, and the cardinal sent him on in advance of him to make arrangements at Calais. He accompanied him on his progress through France, and was saluted by Francis as an ambassador. He was actually receiving at this time a pension of 218¾ crowns from Francis under the treaty of the Moore. In the spring of 1528 there were seditious rumours in some parts of Kent about demanding repayment of the loan which the people had been forced to contribute to the king; and some even proposed to break into gentlemen's houses, among others that of Guildford's half-brother, Sir Edward, and steal their weapons. This gave Sir Henry much to do, and he ultimately sat on a commission at Rochester for the trial of the malcontents. It is needless to say that he had no sympathy with popular movements. His fortunes were built on court favour, and when Thomas Cromwell came as Wolsey's agent to suppress the small priories in Kent for his college at Oxford, Guildford asked him to visit him at Leeds Castle, with a view to obtain from him the farm of the suppressed house of Bilsington.
The ravages of the sweating sickness in 1528 caused the justices in Kent, among whom were Sir Henry Guildford and his brother, Sir Edward, to adjourn the sessions at Deptford, where they met ‘in a croft nigh unto the street,’ from June till October. At the end of June Sir William Compton died of it, and Guildford was his chief executor. On the arrival of Cardinal Campeggio in England at the end of September he was, as controller of the household, much occupied with the preparations for his reception. He met the legate on Barham Downs, and at Dartford informed him of the arrangements for his entering London. In the same year he made an exchange of lands with the priory of Leeds in Kent, and appointed Lord De la Warr and others trustees for the execution of his will. Next year (1529) he was one of the witnesses called to prove the consummation of the marriage between Prince Arthur and Catherine of Arragon, when he practically could prove nothing, because, as he said, he was not then twelve years old. This statement, together with the fact that he gave his age as forty at the time the deposition was taken, shows that he was born in 1489. In the parliament of 1529 he was knight of the shire for Kent, and it was he who gave point to the complaints of the commons against the spiritualty with regard to probates of wills by the statement that he had paid to Wolsey and Archbishop Warham a thousand marks as executor to Sir William Compton. On 1 Dec. he signed the articles brought against Wolsey in parliament. On the 8th he witnessed at Westminster the charter which created Anne Boleyn's father Earl of Wiltshire. He was one of those whose friendship Wolsey at his fall, by Thomas Cromwell's advice, secured by a pension of 40l. a year, and who probably spoke in his favour as far as they dared. On 20 May 1530 he was present at an assay of the silver coinage at Westminster. On 20 June he was named on a commission of gaol-delivery for Canterbury Castle. On 13 July he signed the celebrated letter of the lords and councillors of England to the pope, urging him to comply with the king's wishes as regards the divorce.
On 23 April 1531 he attended a chapter of the Garter at Greenwich. On the 26th he surrendered his patent of the offices of constable, doorward, and parker at Leeds and Langley, and had a new grant of them to him and Sir Edward Guildford in survivorship. He was still in high favour with the king, but he was strongly opposed in his own mind to the policy the king was now pursuing of casting off his wife without a papal sentence and fortifying himself against the pope and emperor by a French alliance. On this subject he spoke his thoughts freely to the imperial ambassador, Chapuys, and even in court he could not disguise his sympathies; so that Anne Boleyn, looking upon him as an enemy, warned him that when she was queen she would deprive him of his office of controller. He answered quickly she need take no trouble about that, for he would give it up himself, and he immediately went to the king to tender his resignation. The king remonstrated, telling him he should not trouble himself about
