GREEN, John III (d.1473), of Widdington and Gosfield, Essex.

One of the least distinguished Speakers of the fifteenth century, Green was a lawyer who advanced himself through his profession and a good marriage. His father and namesake, perhaps another lawyer, Essex Feet of Fines, iii. 258. is an obscure figure. Through his marriage to the daughter of John Duke, a minor household servant of Edward III, the elder John Green acquired the manor at Widdington in north-west Essex, where he took up residence. His estates at Widdington, Sampford and Stisted were valued at £20 p.a. for tax purposes in Henry IV’s reign. Morant, ii. 366; Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. n.s. viii. 283; xix. 25; Feudal Aids, vi. 443. Later, in August 1435, he and Agnes went to law over a holding at Thaxted, just to the east of Widdington, in order to assert her claim to a third part of this property in dower from her previous marriage. CP40/701, rot. 327. He played a limited role in local affairs, although he attested the return of Essex’s knights of the shire to Parliament on at least six occasions between 1414 and 1431 and was among those in the county expected to swear an oath to keep the peace administered throughout the kingdom in 1434. CPR, 1429-36, p. 401. He also acted as a surety and mainpernor for important local gentry like John Leventhorpe I* and John Doreward†, CFR, xiv. 359; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 160, 301. and probably survived until the late 1440s. The MP was still ‘John Green the younger’ in Apr. 1446: CAD, iv. A6996-7. Renovations at Widdington church in 1874 uncovered a brass missing its inscription but dating from the mid 15th century. It was probably that of the elder John: Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. n.s. viii. 283; xix. 26.

According to one authority, the MP spent his childhood in the household of the distinguished Essex lawyer, Thomas Rolf, a serjeant-at-law; if so, Rolf may have sponsored his entry to an inn of court. By 1443 Green was active as a ‘legis aprenticio’ Essex RO, deeds of Blunts in Hockley, D/DU 333/3. His legal career is difficult to trace because he never reached the higher ranks of his profession. and in the following year he was a party to a conveyance by which part of the Rolf estate was settled on the Essex esquire John Helion and his wife Edith, one of the serjeant’s daughters and heirs. Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 34. Roskell, 267, assumes that Edith was Rolf’s sole da. and h., but by his second marriage the serjeant had another daughter, Margaret, to whom he also left part of his estate: CIPM, xxv. 383; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 34. Helion had two daughters by Edith, who shortly after his death in 1450 married Green. PCC 12 Rous; C139/140/31; CCR, 1447-54, p. 207. The marriage greatly enhanced Green’s status because she brought him both the lands she had inherited and those she held in dower from Helion. From her father she had succeeded to several manors and other lands in Gosfield (where she and Green took up residence), It was as ‘of Gosfield’ that Green received a royal pardon in Oct. 1452: C67/40, m. 11. Sible Hedingham and elsewhere in north-west Essex. In the late spring and early summer of 1451, after she and her new husband had paid the King a fine of five marks for marrying without licence, she received third parts of the manors of Helions Bumpstead in north-west Essex and Bakewell in Derbyshire for her dower. Edith also retained possession of the manors of Beauchamp William, Beauchamp Othen and Ovington in Essex and Haverhill in west Suffolk, properties she held for life by grant of Helion or his father. CPR, 1446-52, p. 427; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 207; C139/140/31; 144/38; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 24, 25, 27; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 34, 69-70. In February 1452, Green and his brother William acquired the other two thirds of Helions Bumpstead from the Crown, to hold during the minority of Philippa and Isabel, Helion’s daughters and heirs, at a rent of 79s. 2d. p.a. CFR, xviii. 253. This grant superseded one made only six days earlier, when the King had assigned the keeping of those of Helion’s lands not in Edith’s hands, along with the wardship of the infant Isabel, to Thomas Thorpe*. It was short-lived, for Thorpe succeeded in having it overturned and in June 1453 he sold the wardship to (Sir) Thomas Tyrell*, who subsequently wed Isabel to Humphrey, one of his younger sons. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 78, 82, 144; CCR, 1447-54, pp, 446-7; C140/18/56.

Through his marriage, Green forged a connexion with the overseer of Helion’s will Henry, Viscount Bourgchier. In the right of his wife, he was one of Bourgchier’s tenants at Sible Hedingham, and he served the peer and his family as a feoffee, witnessed deeds on their behalf and almost certainly gave them legal advice. PCC 12 Rous; L.S. Woodger, ‘Hen. Bourgchier’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1974), 271; Essex RO, Saffron Walden recs., D/B 2/2/18; CAD, iv. A6996-7, 7736, 7909; v. A11762, 13113; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 24-25; Roskell, 267; E41/332. Like other lawyers, he was frequently in demand for such services. Among the Essex gentry who turned to him were Richard Alrede (a former receiver-general of the duchy of Lancaster), (Sir) John Say II*, Sir Thomas Tyrell and his younger brother William Tyrell II* and the Dorewards of Bocking. He could claim a family connexion with the Tyrells, since his sister-in-law, Margaret, the wife of his brother William Green, was, like them, descended from Sir William Coggeshall*. C1/29/175; C148/43; CAD, i. B1443, C1105, 1358; iv. A6165, A7724; v. A11888, 13118; Essex RO, deeds of Blunts in Hockley, D/DU/568/10, 11; Misc. docs., D/DB/T96/51; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 36, 45, 55, 66; CPR, 1452-61, p. 503; 1461-7, p. 228; 1467-77, pp. 344-5; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 24-25; 1454-61, p. 339; 1461-8, p. 462; 1468-76, no. 38; 1476-85, no. 345; CFR, xix. 236-7. As for the Dorewards, Green’s links with them were such as to persuade the prior of St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, that he was an executor of John Doreward, the father of John*. Following Doreward’s death in the early 1460s, the prior claimed in the court of common pleas that money was owing to him from the deceased’s estate, an action in which he named Green as one of the executors. Obliged to answer the suit as a defendant, Green pleaded in Easter term 1465 that he had not in fact accepted that role on behalf of the deceased. CP40/817, rots. 529, 529d. Doreward’s widow, Blanche, is the only executor referred to by name in his will: PCC 2 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 13-15). In the event, she predeceased him

It is also possible that Green worked for Sir John Fastolf, since that prominent East Anglian knight employed a John Green in the late 1440s to procure information relating to one of his legal disputes. Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 80-81. Among those who certainly served the knight, as a feoffee and a surety at the Exchequer, was the merchant, Thomas West*. A resident of Sudbury in Suffolk, about a dozen miles north-east of Gosfield, he was a Member of the Parliament of 1455 like Green, whom he later appointed to supervise his will of 1467. PCC 20 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 156-157v). Resolving disputes by arbitration was another part of Green’s extra-curial work. In 1454 he and John Ansty* acted as arbiters in a quarrel between Thomas Burgoyne* on the one side and Reynold Arneburgh* and several associates on the other. CCR, 1454-61, p. 33. Thirteen years later he and (Sir) Ralph Josselyn† arbitrated between the prior of Blackmore, Essex, and William Malpas, a yeoman of the Crown. CCR, 1461-8, pp. 453-4. Green’s legal expertise ensured him a place on the Essex bench, to which he was appointed in 1448, and in the 1450s both the duchy of Lancaster and the corporation of London retained him for his legal counsel. He began working for the duchy in 1455 and in April 1457 he was appointed common huntsman of London, whose citizens possessed ancient hunting rights in the Chilterns, Middlesex and Surrey and claimed like privileges in the Great Forest (later Waltham Forest), Essex. As the common huntsman, a position he held for just a few years, he was an officer of the mayor’s household and received a salary of £10 p.a. Jnl. 6, f. 118v; Studies in London Hist. ed. Hollaender and Kellaway, 99. By the mid 1460s, he was also a counsellor for Thomas Kempe, bishop of London, from whom he received a retainer of 20s. a year. SC6/1140/25.

It was probably a coincidence that Green entered his first Parliament in the same year that he started working for the duchy of Lancaster. If outside influence was exerted on his behalf at the Essex election to this assembly, it almost certainly emanated from his patron Viscount Bourgchier, newly appointed treasurer of England. In spite of its undoubted benefits, a connexion with such an important lord could also have its negative aspects. It probably explains how Green and his brother came to attract the unwelcome attentions of the notorious Sir Thomas Mallory*, an adversary of Bourgchier’s half-brother, Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, in the previous summer of 1454. On 15 Oct. of that year a prominent group of Essex j.p.s, Green himself among them, took indictments against Mallory. According to the jurors, the knight had joined forces with a yeoman, John Aleyn of London, with whom he had conspired at Braintree in the previous July to rob Green’s brother, William, and others of their goods. Furthermore, on the 21st of the same month, a gang led by Aleyn, acting on Mallory’s orders, had ridden to Gosfield to attack Green’s property there. Taking advantage of the fact that it was a Sunday, they had broken into his close and houses while most of the residents of the parish were at mass, although they had been interrupted before they could steal anything. KB9/280/42-44. Given that Green was just one of Bourgchier’s many followers and dependants, it is unclear why Mallory should have targeted him and William in particular. One explanation is that he was seeking revenge: Green may in his professional capacity have played some part in bringing the knight to account at law for previous illegal activities. Mallory was arrested after the taking of these indictments, for a day later he was a prisoner in Colchester castle. On the following 5 Nov. the authorities appointed a commission of gaol delivery for the castle. Green was among the commissioners as, strikingly, were the duke of Buckingham and Viscount Bourgchier (ordinarily figures of too much importance to concern themselves with such a body), presumably because they were determined to ensure that Mallory faced the full force of the law. By then, however, Mallory was no longer in the castle, having managed to flee his confinement on 30 Oct., but it is likely that news of his escape had yet to reach Westminster at the issuing of the commission. Already facing other charges in the court of King’s bench, he gave himself up to the Marshalsea prison in mid November. No doubt appearing before the King’s justices at Westminster was a far less daunting prospect than coming before two vengeful peers at Colchester. In January 1455 Green and other Essex j.p.s took a further indictment against the knight for his escape from Colchester, and on the following 19 May he was transferred from the Marshalsea to the Tower of London, probably to ensure he remained in custody – he was an adept escaper – rather than political reasons. Thankfully for posterity, he spent much of the rest of his life as a prisoner, for he turned to a more productive pursuit, the writing of Le Morte d’Arthur, completed during his last spell of incarceration. C66/479, m. 20d; KB9/280/84; KB29/85, rot. 5; A.C. Baugh, ‘Documenting Sir Thomas Malory’, Speculum, viii. 23-25.

Green took up his seat in the Parliament of 1455 three weeks after Mallory was sent to the Tower. Shortly before the dissolution of this assembly, he joined Bourgchier’s son and namesake and others in obtaining the wardship of a Somerset heiress from the Crown, a grant for which they afterwards paid £220 to the Exchequer. C81/1622/69, 85; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 285-6, 288. Also among the grantees was William Tyrell II, his fellow knight of the shire. As a newcomer to the Commons, Green probably relied on Tyrell, an experienced parliamentarian, for help and advice. The Parliament met in the wake of the duke of York’s victory at the battle of St. Albans but Viscount Bourgchier had yet to commit himself fully to York’s cause and both Green and his brother William, a member of Henry VI’s household, continued to serve the Lancastrian Crown. Furthermore, the MP served on several anti-Yorkist commissions of the late 1450s and in January 1460 the King granted William Green the bailiwick of Ware, Hertfordshire, recently confiscated from York’s ally, Richard, earl of Salisbury. CPR, 1452-61, p. 585. A few months later, Bourgchier finally took up arms on York’s behalf and he became treasurer for the second time after the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton in July the same year.

Following the summoning of the Parliament of 1460, Green gained election as a knight of the shire for Essex and on 10 Oct., the fourth day of the new assembly, his fellow MPs chose him as their Speaker. He protested that he had no wish to accept the office, but by this date such pleas had already become formalized and a matter of course. Roskell, 27; PROME, xii. 513. A few weeks after Parliament opened, he obtained the keeping of the manor of Newport and hamlet of Birchanger (both part of the duchy of Cornwall’s estate in Essex), a lease formerly held by Bourgchier’s by now deceased son Henry and which was in the viscount’s gift as treasurer. CFR, xix. 288-9; Woodger, 271. The Parliament was momentous, since it agreed that York, who had laid claim to the throne shortly after it opened, should succeed Henry VI as King. It also annulled all acts of the previous Parliament, held at Coventry in 1459, which had attainted the duke and his leading allies, and it appointed a new committee of feoffees of those duchy of Lancaster estates set aside for the administration of Henry VI’s will. Green and his patron, Viscount Bourgchier, were among those who now joined the committee for the first time. Roskell, 268-9; PROME, xii. 515-26, 540-42.

After seizing the throne in the following year, York’s son rewarded Bourgchier with the title of earl of Essex and confirmed him in his office of treasurer. Green also flourished under Edward IV, assisted by his links with the earl and, no doubt, with the new King’s household servant, Sir Thomas Montgomery†, who had married his elder stepdaughter, Philippa Helion. Roskell, 269; C241/246/72. A few weeks after Edward’s accession, Green and Richard Wednesbury received a new lease of Newport and Birchanger. (Three years later, these properties were committed to Green alone, a grant renewed several times during the mid and late 1460s.) CFR, xx. 14, 134, 152, 202-3. In June 1461 the MP and his brother William, who became a j.p. in Edward’s reign, were appointed to a commission instructed to raise ships for the King’s navy. Early the following year, the authorities arrested John de Vere, 12th earl of Oxford, for treason and granted the stewardship of his lands in Essex, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the two Greens.

Another office to come Green’s way after the accession of Edward IV was that of recorder of Colchester, a role for which its burgesses chose him in September 1463. It was a new office, created by the charter they received from Edward in March 1462. Prior to the charter, local gentry had owned property in Colchester, made use of its court and joined its guild of St. Helen, but they had not held offices there by appointment of the borough as opposed to the Crown. At the same time as becoming recorder, Green also took up the position of a j.p. at Colchester, another office in the gift of the burgesses. Although they derived the right annually to elect four such justices from the previous charter they had received from Henry VI in 1447, they did not regularly exercise it before its confirmation in the charter of 1462. VCH Essex, ix. 54.

It was almost certainly thanks to his attachment to the earl of Essex that Green came to attend a meeting of the King’s Council at which the earl was also present, in February 1468. C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 445. A year later, the chief steward of the duchy of Lancaster, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, appointed him his deputy in that office. Green’s association with Warwick probably helped him at the Readeption, of which the earl was one of the principal architects. After the restoration of Henry VI in the autumn of 1470, the earl of Essex and other Yorkist lords who had not followed Edward IV into exile spent a brief period under arrest. Ross, 155. Yet the pliable Green continued to serve on the bench and other commissions in his native county, as he did after Edward had recovered the throne. He did however take the precaution of obtaining a royal pardon in February 1472. C67/48, m. 12. In the same month Green was appointed to a commission of oyer and terminer charged with investigating treasons and other offences allegedly committed by a number of men in Essex, among them Sir Thomas de Vere who, like his brother the 13th earl of Oxford, had supported the Readeption. In spite of having benefited from the arrest and subsequent execution of their father a decade earlier, Green had become a feoffee of their mother, the 12th earl’s widowed countess, Elizabeth. In January 1473 the unfortunate Elizabeth was coerced into surrendering her estates to the King’s brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester, a shabby affair which, to their credit, Green and six of his co-feoffees attempted to resist. CCR, 1468-76, no. 1214; Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, i. pp. xc-xci; CPR, 1476-85, pp. 434-5; M.A. Hicks, ‘Last Days of Elizabeth Countess of Oxford’, EHR, ciii. 76-95.

By that date Green had just months to live, since he died on 1 May 1473, possibly in London given that the Chancery was aware of his death as early as the following day. CFR, xxi. no. 158. There is no extant inquisition post mortem for him and his will, assuming he had made one, has likewise not survived. He was buried in the parish church at Gosfield, where his brass remains. Roskell, 356. Green’s brother, William, who served as sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire in 1475-6, survived into his late sixties. The church at Little Sampford, one of the parishes where he had held properties in the right of his wife, was his burial place after his death in the late 1480s. William’s successor was his son, another John Green. PCC 33 Milles (PROB11/8, ff. 266v-267); CFR, xxii. no. 189; Morant, ii. 286, 526; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1039. The Speaker’s widow Edith Green survived until June 1497. In her will, made three years earlier, she asked to be buried beside her first husband John Helion in the church at Leighs priory, although the MP was one of those for whom she requested a priest who was a fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge, to sing masses. Her heirs were Agnes and Margaret, her daughters by Green, and her grand-daughter Anne, the daughter of Isabel Helion by Humphrey Tyrell. The three women were respectively the wives of Sir William Fynderne†, Sir Henry Tey† and Sir Roger Wentworth†. PCC 13 Horne (PROB11/11, ff. 109v-110); CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 24, 25, 27. According to Roskell, 356, the MP also had a third daughter, who became prioress of the Dominican nuns at Dartford, Kent.