GREEN, John II

Owing to his very common name, Green is impossible to identify with certainty and it is not known whether he was from Wiltshire.2 It is unlikely that he was the merchant of that name from Atworth (near Melksham) who was active in the early 1390s, and it is impossible to tell whether he should be identified with the John Grene who in 1415 stood surety for Thomas Hyweye†, newly elected to the Parl. of that year as one of the burgesses for Malmesbury: C241/192/48; C219/11/7. One of the more plausible candidates for the MP is a minor royal servant who served as a yeoman of the avenary for at least 11 years in the first half of Henry VI’s reign. It is perhaps he who features in three household account books and a royal warrant of this period. In these documents this John Green is referred to as a ‘valet’ but he may have combined the role with that of a purveyor for the Household.3 E101/408/11, f. 13; 25, f. 8; 409/9, f. 38; E404/46/302-3. The last definite reference to the yeoman of the avenary is provided by letters patent of July 1440, by which his commission as such was renewed until 8 Jan. following, although a John Green was a member of the Household in 1457. It is also recorded that John Green supplied mutton to the Household while John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton, was its treasurer (November 1446-March 1453) but the avenary was concerned with purveying oats and other fodder for the King’s stables rather than supplying meat. In spite of the ubiquity of the name, it is also worth noting (given there was a connexion between the avenary and the stables) that in March 1460 John Green was ordered to purvey horses for ‘the conduct’ of Queen Margaret.4 CPR, 1436-41, p. 339; 1452-61, p. 579; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 205-6; E403/816, m. 1. Finally, in the mid 1460s there was a John Green who was a yeoman of Edward IV’s household, and it is not inconceivable that he and the avener of the previous reign were one and the same man. On the other hand, it is possible that the same minor servant of the Yorkist Crown was still active in the latter part of the following decade, making it very unlikely that he had sat in the Commons over 40 years earlier.5 E101/412/2; CPR, 1476-85, p. 1. Coincidently, there was also a royal avener of that name in the reigns of Ric. III and Hen. VII: ibid. 462, 513; 1485-94, pp. 25, 151, 174; 1494-1509, p. 288.