GREEN, Walter

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 231-2.

There is no definite evidence to prove that Green hailed from Bridgnorth, as early modern family tradition suggested, but he certainly possessed a family connexion with the Greens of Drayton, Northamptonshire, for his putative nephew, Henry Green, was born at his house in Stepney in November 1414. C139/78/48.

As a result of Green’s stewardship of the estates of Bishop Morgan of Ely he was appointed one of the executors of the bishop’s will. It was in this capacity that in 1436 he was pursued by the increasingly cash-strapped Crown for a horse and other goods and chattels of the bishop’s which should have fallen to the King on the prelate’s death. E159/212, recorda Easter rot. 8.

Green made his will on 6 Dec. 1456, just two days before his death, appointing his widow, their son and heir, Robert, and their sons-in-law, John Gaynesford II*, John Arderne and John Catesby its executors. Specific bequests of goods and money went to all of Green’s children, his grandson William Arderne, and his servants. In addition, Catesby was to receive from the deceased man’s estate the 50 marks which were owing to him from the dowry of his wife, Green’s daughter Elizabeth. PCC 15 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 116v-17); The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 232 erroneously stated that it was Catesby who owed the money to Green.

Green’s second wife, Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of the former Middlesex under sheriff and MP Robert Warner, who had brought to Walter (her third husband), her father’s valuable properties, including the manor of Cowley Peachey and lands in Hayes, was assigned estates of an annual value of 100 marks for her dower. She survived her last husband until 1472, making her will in January of that year. Under its provisions, she was to be buried in the abbey church of Bermondsey ‘behind the cross of Bermondsey’. She provided for a penny each to be distributed to 400 poor men and women on the day of her burial, and a further 40s. on the day of her month’s mind. Her household goods, above all plate and items of expensive cloth, were divided between her sons Robert (whose heirlooms included a dozen silver spoons marked with an ‘R’ and a mass book), and John (who was to have a silver standing cup known as ‘the holy cuppe’), and her daughters Elizabeth Catesby (to whom she bequeathed among other items her best matins book and six cushions of green cloth embroidered with flowers of hawthorn), Alice Holgrave (who received her mother’s little matins book and other goods, including a tester decorated with figures of men and women), and Joan Salisbury and their husbands. Also remembered were Elizabeth’s grand-daughter Katherine Arderne (the daughter of Alice Holgrave née Green by her first husband, John Arderne), who was to have, among other things, a tester stitched with the words ‘reasone, mercy and gramercy’, and her ‘son’ (possibly her godson) Thomas Windsor†, who received a valuable silver goblet. PCC 12 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff. 88-89). Thomas Windsor was no blood relation of Elizabeth’s, being the son of Walter Green’s eldest daughter by his first wife. A few months before his death Green had stood surety for his sons-in-law Gaynesford and Arderne and several associates who purchased the custody of the Windsor heir and lands from the Crown for 200 marks: CFR, xix. 151; E159/232, recorda Easter rot. 6d.

After the death of her first husband, the royal surgeon William Stalworth, in 1446, Green’s daughter Katherine had married the Surrey landowner John Gaynesford II. CP40/751, rot. 231; CPR, 1436-41, p. 280; 1446-52, pp. 6, 27. Although as a widow she was entitled to manage her own affairs, it is likely that the Gaynesford match owed something to the influence of her father and her stepmother, the widow of Henry de la Poyle. When Katherine’s stepbrother Robert de la Poyle died in about 1438, the de la Poyle estates (with the exception of the portion held in dower by Elizabeth Green) were settled on the boy’s maternal grandfather, Robert Warner for his life, with remainder to John Gaynesford I* and his heirs. As part of his son’s marriage settlement, in 1447 Gaynesford settled the Oxfordshire manor of Hampton Poyle on his son John II and Katherine. Within a year of John Gaynesford II’s death Katherine took as her third husband Edmund Rede*. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 232 erroneously reverses the order of Katherine’s marriages: H. Kleineke, ‘Schoolboy’s Tale’, in London and the Kingdom ed. Davies and Prescott, 152.

Strand Inn, Robert Warner’s former property which Green had acquired by his second marriage passed via their daughter Alice into the hands of her successive lawyer husbands John Arderne and John Holgrave, and by the 1460s was serving as one of the Inns of Chancery. J.H. Baker, Men of Ct.(Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 886.