The priory waxed rich, grew famous, and nourished during a period of 433 years, no doubt becoming luxurious, idle, and corrupt, like other fraternities; until at length, in 1531, the end came. King Henry VIII., wishing to reward Sir Thomas Audley, afterwards Lord Chancellor and first Baron Audley of Walden, for his service as Speaker, in the impeachment of Wolsey, cast his eye upon this Priory, sent for Nicholas Hancock, the last Prior, whom he cajoled with complimentary praises, commending his hospitality, and telling him that a man of his merit and ability deserved higher preferment, and that if he would surrender the Priory into his (the King's) hands, he should have something better. After some hesitation the Prior gave up the house, the Canons were sent to other houses of the same order, and the Priory, with all its appurtenances, bestowed on Audley. Sir Thomas Audley determined to build himself a mansion on the site, and offered the church to any one who would take it down, but it was so strongly built that no one would undertake the cost. He then pulled it down himself, and allowed any one to have the materials who would carry them away, giving the four large bells to Stepney Church, and the five smaller to St. Stephen, Coleman Street. He then added new buildings, where he dwelt until his death, 1544, when the property passed, by the marriage of his daughter, to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, who was beheaded 1572, and it was then called Duke's Place. It descended to their son, Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, who sold it to the Corporation, was eventually taken down, and streets built on the site. The only vestige remaining is a stone arch between 73, Leadenhall Street and 39, Mitre Court. The Priory possessed a messuage, dovecote, and garden of seven acres, on the east side of Houndsditch, which were given to Sir T. Audley, and which he bestowed on Magdalen College, Cambridge. In the street leading thereto, one of the priors had built some cottages for bedridden people, which Stow remembered as having seen in his boyhood, the bedridden people, men and women, lying by the windows, that devout persons might see them as they passed and bestow alms upon them: which street, afterwards, according to Munday, was inhabited by "these men, or rather monsters in the shape of men, who profess to live by lending, and yet will lend nothing but upon pawns." Stow, who lived in the parish of St. Andrew Undershaft, and was buried in the parish church, speaks from personal recollection of the Prior "keeping a bountiful house for rich and poor, as well within the houses as to all comers at the gate," and, when a boy, of going to farmer Goodman, in the outer-soken, where Goodman's Fields now are, for milk at the rate of "three pints, hot from the kine, for a halfpenny."