In the mid fourteenth century, Sir Henry Green (d.1369), c.j.KB, had built a remarkable fortune: large enough to endow two great gentry families. Both were wealthy, but the junior, settled at Drayton, was certainly the more politically active and probably the richer.
This inheritance was, however, a much depleted one. Although his elder brother’s marriage did not produce the heir to deprive John Green of the lands to which he had long stood heir, it did produce a widow with an interest in the Green lands far in excess of her common-law entitlement. When Ralph had married Katherine, daughter of the Norfolk baron, John, Lord Clifton (d.1388), he had settled on her a jointure which, even measured in the context of the social disparity between bride and groom, was very generous and one which showed little regard for the interests of his younger brother and nephews. It comprised the manors of Comberton (Cambridgeshire), Buckworth (Huntingdonshire), Chalton and Colworth (Bedfordshire), Wavendon, Great Woolstone and Emberton (Buckinghamshire), and, most significantly, those of Drayton, Lowick, Great Houghton, Cotes and Raunds (Northamptonshire) at the very heart of the family inheritance. Ralph’s brother could, however, take some comfort from the fact that those lands not settled in jointure remained in the hands of feoffees throughout the short marriage and hence Katherine could have no claim to dower. None the less, even for a family as wealthy as the Greens her jointure was a heavy burden.
Katherine’s large jointure may explain why John Green had such an obscure career, although it was not to prove the same deterrent to our MP. When John died on 9 Feb. 1433 our MP, born at the house at Stepney belonging to Walter Green (probably his maternal uncle), was still short of his majority. Indeed, at this date he may not yet have been his father’s heir. When John had drawn up his will on the previous 28 Jan. his eldest son had still been alive, but the young Ralph must have died very soon after.
To the burden of his brief minority and the very much more serious one of Katherine’s jointure was added that of the provision made for Henry’s mother. Under the terms of his father’s will she was to have for life all his properties in Northamptonshire (that is, the manors of Hardwick and Grafton Underwood, the advowson of the church of Grafton Underwood, and land in Irthlingborough), the manor of Grateley in Hampshire and the advowson of the church there, and the manor of Mathern near Chepstow in Wales, together with her common-law dower in his Wiltshire estates.
One thing, however, is clear. It was Katherine’s interest in the main Green estates that forced Henry to focus his interests on the west-country estates of the Mauduits and prompted him to seek a wealthy wife from that part of the country. On 6 Mar. 1439 he entered into a bond in the huge sum of 2,000 marks to Walter, Lord Hungerford†, supervisor of the will of his intended bride’s first husband and a feoffee in the Paulet lands. The conditional defeasance shows how high a price he was both obliged and prepared to pay to secure the hand of a wife who was both a widow and an heiress. The burdensome interest of Katherine Felbrigg threatened to reduce any dower to which his own bride might become entitled and thus obliged him to settle a larger jointure than might otherwise have been the case. He thus undertook to settle upon her jointure lands (in tail-male) with an annual value of as much as £200, including his important manor of Warminster, together with lands worth a further 100 marks in reversion expectant on Katherine’s death. Such a jointure would not have disappointed the bride of a baron, but it easy to see how Henry could justify following the precedent set by his uncle. Not only did Constance have her own very considerable recommendations and a strong claim to insurance against Katherine’s continued survival, but his own circumstances meant that a large jointure (settled, as this one was, in tail-male) was unlikely to damage the interests of the male line of his family. His heirs-presumptive were his two sisters, and, should he have male issue by Constance, it was unlikely that she (already aged about 30) would long survive their coming of age. Further, should Constance predecease him having produced only female issue, then any legitimate male issue he might later have would not be disadvantaged by the entail to his issue by her. Accordingly, on 16 May 1439, for the sum of 20 marks, he purchased a royal licence to settle the manors of Warminster, Westbury and Ditteridge, held in chief, on himself and Constance and the heirs male of their bodies, and to these were added all the other manors of which Henry was then seised with the exception of his two Northamptonshire manors of Hardwick and Grafton Underwood surrendered to him by his mother.
Constance’s own lands significantly strengthened his landed position in the West Country. When she had been contracted in marriage to John Paulet in 1427, her father had agreed to settle lands worth £40 p.a. on the couple in return for a jointure to the same value to be settled by the groom.
Another implication of the death of Green’s first wife may have been the loss not only of her Paulet jointure but also of her hereditary estates. The jurors in her Hampshire inquisition post mortem, held on 19 Jan. 1443, had been careful to make reference to a daughter, named Anne, she had had by Henry as the justification for his continued tenancy (by law of England) of the property she held by right of inheritance, namely her share of the Poynings lands. The immediate loser here was the Crown, who had wardship of the heir to these lands, and it may be that the jurors were guilty of colluding with Henry in an attempted fraud. Their finding is the only evidence that the marriage was not barren and it seems that the Crown succeeded in asserting its own claim against that of our MP.
This grant aside, however, the probable loss of land occasioned by Constance’s death gave Green an additional incentive to refocus his career on Northamptonshire. This change of emphasis was soon cemented by his second marriage. Just as his first had strengthened our MP’s position in Wiltshire, his second did the same in Northamptonshire. His new wife was, like his old, both an heiress and a widow. She had significant interests in south Lincolnshire (as coheiress of her father she had a share of the manor of Gedney and as the widow of Pinchbeck, who seems to have been a younger son, a life interest in other lesser properties), but, more important from the perspective of her new husband, was the generous settlement her second husband had made in her favour. In his will, drawn up on 5 July 1445, John Wittlebury had bequeathed her the manors of Milton and Marholm for the term of her life. This represented almost the entire Wittlebury estate and he was no doubt prompted to such generosity by the fact that their son and heir was still a boy. Thus, although any issue our MP might produce by his new wife would not be heir-apparent to the Roos estates, in the short term her lands were a valuable augmentation to his resources, the more valuable because of Katherine Felbrigg’s continued survival. Margaret also brought further assets: on 6 Aug. 1445 the abbot of Peterborough, of whom the Wittleburys were tenants, granted her the marriage of her young son together with the wardship of those Wittlebury lands that had come into the abbot’s hands on John’s death.
Green’s enhanced landed status in Northamptonshire may be one explanation for his election on 19 Jan. 1447 to represent the county in Parliament. But there is a more important one. In this year he appears in the first surviving list of those in receipt of robes as esquires of the royal household, and it is reasonable to infer that this was not his first year of household service (it may explain his participation in Beaufort’s expedition).
The presence of York among Green’s feoffees is to be seen in the context of a well-known reference from the duke’s accounts. At about Michaelmas 1450 Thomas Willoughby, the duke’s auditor, rode from his place at Wardington in Oxfordshire to secure the support of various influential Northamptonshire men for York’s candidates at the forthcoming election. Green was visited by Willoughby at Milton.
The early 1450s were a period of comparative obscurity in Green’s career. On 20 Jan. 1452 he received a further small mark of royal favour with confirmation of letters patent concerning the ancient weekly market and yearly fair appurtenant to his wife’s manor of Gedney. By this date he was probably already acting as steward of the liberty of the abbey of Peterborough, from which his wife held the manors of Milton and Marholm.
These transactions, however, fade into insignificance compared with the one he entered into in 1458. His two marriages had produced only one surviving daughter and his second wife was, by this date, beyond child-bearing age. It was thus probable that this daughter, Constance (born in about 1447), would fall heiress to a very substantial inheritance.
This marriage was, however, something more than a business transaction. In the troubled conditions of the late 1450s it also had a political dimension. On 7 July 1458 Reynold Boulers, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, licensed the prior of his cathedral church to solemnise two marriages in the chapel of the duke’s castle of Maxstoke: that of the duke’s son to Constance Green and that of the duke’s daughter, Katherine, to the son and heir of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury.
None the less, there is no evidence (beyond his appointment to the Lancastrian commission of array in December 1459) to indicate what part, if any, Green played in the crisis of 1459-61, and he certainly did not follow the political lead of the duke of Buckingham. Indeed, his general obscurity during the contentious 1450s suggests that he was a man of circumspection, and he may have been careful to balance the commitment represented by his daughter’s marriage into the Stafford family by developing connexions among Henry VI’s opponents. On 2 Nov. 1460, when the Yorkists were in power, John, Lord Lovell, granted the manor of Ashby de la Zouch to a group of feoffees including, alongside our MP, Edward, earl of March, and William Hastings. There can be little doubt that this was an involuntary conveyance on Lovell’s part for he was politically compromised by his role in defending the Tower of London in the Lancastrian cause in the previous summer. Green’s inclusion among the feoffees implies that he had the trust of the new regime, although it is also possible that he was named as a friend of Lovell alongside men hostile to Lovell’s interest.
One can only speculate as to whether there was a political dimension to a major raid on Green’s property at Gedney on 21 Feb. 1461, a month before the decisive battle of Towton. Led by Sir John Colville of Newton in Cambridgeshire, the raiders, according to an action later sued by our MP, plundered goods worth as much as £200. Most of these were ordinary household goods, but some were items of much greater value, none more so than a small chest containing 23 gold rings, three of which were set with precious stones.
Nevertheless, when it came, Green’s assimilation into the new political climate was complete and brought him considerable advantage. Restored to his local bench in the spring of 1463, he was soon a beneficiary of royal patronage to an even greater extent than he had been in the late 1440s. When John de Vere, earl of Oxford, petitioned in the Parliament of 1463 for the repeal of the act of Henry IV’s first Parliament confirming the duke of Ireland’s attainder, the King added exemptions in favour of Green, his wife and stepson, Robert Wittlebury, for any manors of which they were seised. It may even be that Green was one of the Northamptonshire Members in this assembly for which the returns are lost. More significantly, on 31 Jan. 1464, as a royal esquire, he was granted a very large annuity of 100 marks assigned on the issues of his native county. So large a grant was a recognition of his great wealth (and perhaps of his relatively advanced age), and he was soon required to earn it. On 3 Feb. 1465 Edward IV personally chose him to fill the vacant shrievalty of Northamptonshire, an office he had last held 20 years before, and there is little reason to doubt that the exemption from future office granted to him in May 1466 was a quid pro quo for this service. His close connexion with the new regime is reflected in his appearance in March 1465 among the feoffees of the esquire of the King’s body, John Donne, in certain forfeited lands Donne held by royal grant. No doubt it was this new standing that prompted him belatedly to bring an action in the court of common pleas against Colville and his adherents for the raid on Gedney. In Michaelmas term 1465 he claimed damages of £400 and, on the following 20 Jan. 1466, before the justices of assize sitting at Bourn, he was awarded costs and damages amounting to £250 against one of the lesser defendants.
These, however, were Green’s twilight years. He did not live long enough to obtain a verdict against Colville himself or to offer further service to Edward IV. He last appears in a public capacity on 9 Apr. 1467, when he attested the return of (Sir) Thomas Tresham* and Richard Middleton† as MPs for his home county.
Green made his will on the following 3 Sept. The arrangements he had entered into on the marriage of his surviving daughter left him with few instructions still to be given regarding the disposition of his patrimony, but he had consolidated his holdings through several forays on the land market and it was with the disposal of these acquisitions that the will was largely concerned. His purchased lands in Thorpe near Peterborough were to augment the dower of his widow before passing to his daughter and her issue; those in nearby Whittlesey, Southorpe and Marholm were to provide first for his widow and then her son, Robert Wittlebury, and his issue; and those in Lowick were to be jointly settled on his daughter and her husband and their issue on condition that they did not hinder the performance of his will (otherwise the lands were to be sold). Green’s main concern, however, was the generous endowment of a chantry of two priests in the church of Lowick. They were to have as much as 24 marks p.a., charged either on lands of his future purchase, or, if such lands should prove insufficient, on his manor of Sudborough.
At his death Green’s estates were divided among several groups of feoffees, and jurors at inquisitions post mortem held in seven counties accordingly returned that he died seised of no lands. His manor of Drayton remained in the hands of his surviving feoffees of 1453, headed by Sir William Catesby, and that of Warminster in those of Bishop Waynflete, and Richard Wydeville, Earl Rivers, then treasurer of England. It is not known when Green had made this latter feoffment but it is likely to have been soon after the marriage of his heiress in the late 1450s when Waynflete was chancellor and Wydeville a prominent Lancastrian. If this is so, they were probably nominees of Buckingham as the groom’s father rather than of our MP. Thomas Lenton and Katherine, daughter of Robert Long, kinsfolk and heirs of William Aldewyncle, had his manors of White Roding in Essex and Comberton in Cambridgeshire. On 18 May 1469 these separate groups of feoffees had royal licence to make settlements, the bulk of the estates passing to Green’s heiress and her husband, but his widow was granted a life interest in the manors of Comberton near Cambridge, Buckworth near Huntingdon, and Hardwick in Northamptonshire.
On the death of Henry Green’s grandson, the second earl of Wiltshire, the heirs to the Green inheritance were the representatives of our MP’s two sisters, Margaret, wife of Sir Henry Huddleston of Irthlingborough, and Isabel, wife of Sir Richard Vere of Thrapston and Addington: these were Margaret’s daughter, Elizabeth, widow of Sir Thomas Cheyne of Fen Ditton (Cambridgeshire), and Isabel’s four grand-daughters (the issue of her son, Sir Henry Vere). In 1499 the wardship of the three surviving heirs was purchased by Sir John Mordaunt†, a royal councillor and Speaker in the Parliament of 1487, and he contracted the eldest, Elizabeth, in marriage to his son and heir, John, created Lord Mordaunt in 1532. Although the claims of the coheirs were famously contested by George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, the bulk of the inheritance passed to the Mordaunts, raised to the earldom of Peterborough in 1628, and they made our MP’s manor house at Drayton their chief residence.
Henry Green himself had been responsible for significant additions to this great house, which had been the home of his ancestors, the Draytons, and had subsequently been remodelled by his grandfather in the later years of the fourteenth century. He added a large entrance porch on the north side of the hall, and from this porch he built a range of buildings extending westward down the north side of the hall and then southwards almost as far as the wall defining the boundary of the fourteenth-century house. Much of this work remains among the later additions and rebuilding, and the northern aspect of the present grand house, with its crenelated turrets, is largely defined by Green’s scheme. He also continued the rebuilding of the church of Lowick, begun by his grandfather and uncle.