GREENFORD, John (d.1474), of Swanton in Lydden, Kent and Winchelsea, Suss.

There were two contemporary John Greenfords living at Lydden, a few miles from Dover. Quite likely they were father and son, but it is difficult to determine at what point the career of the elder one ended and that of the younger began. John Greenford ‘of Lydden, gentleman’ held lands in the Kentish hundreds of Folkestone, Wingham and Preston in 1431, and was among the leading men of Kent required to take the generally-administered oath against maintenance in 1434. Feudal Aids, iii. 73, 77; CPR, 1429-36, p. 388. He married (perhaps as his second wife) Alice, the widow of Edmund Roper (d.1433) of Canterbury, and was joint guardian with her of another Edmund Roper, her late husband’s son and coheir. The other son, John Roper, came under the guardianship of Archbishop Kemp of York, and together with the archbishop the Greenfords acted in 1436 as patrons of the chantry at the altar of St. Nicholas in St. Dunstan’s church, outside the walls of Canterbury. However, Greenford was not mentioned as a co-patron on later occasions in 1441 (when Alice and the archbishop acted alone), so it may be that he died in this or the preceding year. Reg. Chichele, i. 279, 294, 307, 311; Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Canterbury consist. ct., reg. 1, f. 25. He was alive in Nov. 1439, when John Greenford ‘junior of Kent, gentleman’ was his surety for a bill in Chancery: C1/39/127-8. Our MP, the younger John, ceased to be described as ‘junior’ about the same time.

A John Greenford was appointed to a royal commission in Kent on 16 Feb. 1428, to investigate wastes done by farmers of lands belonging to the rectory of Newington next Hythe. Three days earlier this property had been granted at the Exchequer to Geoffrey Lowther*, lieutenant to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, as constable of Dover castle and warden of the Cinque Ports, with the same Greenford standing surety on his behalf. CFR, xv. 210. If, as seems very likely, this man was the future MP, the surety marked the beginning of his association with the authorities at Dover, an association which lasted for over 36 years. Evidently trained in the law, for most of this period Greenford held office as steward or ‘clerk’ of Dover castle, and he was placed on the quorum on commissions sent into Kent and to investigate acts of piracy affecting the barons of the Ports. His close links with Lowther continued for the duration of the latter’s term as lieutenant-warden, and he attested his superior officer’s election to Parliament for Kent in 1432. CCR, 1435-41, p. 442. Another of Lowther’s circle was the prominent landowner William Haute*, also elected on that occasion, and together with Haute in June 1440 Greenford received at the Exchequer keeping of the Kentish manor of Orgrave. CFR, xvii. 162.

Greenford’s connexion with Winchelsea dated from 1438; he was one of the deputies sent from the Port to Brodhulls twice that year and again in 1440 and 1442. At the Brodhull of December 1438 it was ordered that five of the delegates, including Greenford and Richard Clitheroe*, should make suit to Duke Humphrey for the ‘recontynuaunce and observaunce’ of the Ports’ liberties, after Clitheroe and others had been ordered to serve on juries before royal justices heading a commission to inquire into treasons and felonies at Rochester, on pain of £40 and contrary to their rights as Portsmen. When they refused they were ‘greviously vexed’ at the Exchequer to pay their fines, and at a special Brodhull in the following April Greenford and Clitheroe were sent back to London to challenge the court’s ruling. They were to have £5 as their expenses. The exemption of barons of the Ports from payment of the parliamentary subsidies of fifteenths and tenths also made work for Greenford, since it caused constant friction at the Exchequer. At the Brodhull of April 1440 he and two others were instructed to go to the Exchequer ‘for to have a full clere ende of the advocantes for all the tyme that is passed’, and at the next meeting he and John Chenew* were paid five marks ‘for gettynge out the allowaunce of the Advocantes as required’, and an additional £3 13s. 4d. ‘for the gettynge out of the wryttes’ to the tax collectors of Kent and Sussex. White and Black Bks. 10-13, 15.

Besides these tasks, undertaken on behalf of all the Ports as a brotherhood, Greenford was called upon to advise their communities separately. To have his friendship, in 1433-4 the authorities at Dover gave him half a mark as steward of the castle, although they presented Lieutenant-warden Lowther with 20s. Add. 29615, f. 201v. For very many years (at least from 1439 to 1470), Greenford received an annual fee of one mark for his counsel to the men of Lydd, the member-port to New Romney, Recs. Lydd, 76, 79, 82, 86, 97, 106, 116-17, 127, 133, 149, 153, 165, 179, 185, 194, 203, 206, 210, 212, 215, 216, 250-1. and Lydd frequently offered him gifts of wine, fish, game-birds and cygnets in return for his assistance in its affairs. On occasion he was paid his expenses while staying in the town, sometimes accompanied by his wife and servants. Ibid. 84, 94, 107, 122, 151, 153, 172, 179, 185, 192; Archaeologia Cantiana, xlvii. 65-66. In return, he was generous with his legal advice (as when he helped to draft the ‘Town Custumes’). Lydd Recs. 216, 245; HMC 5th Rep. 521-2, 524. The authorities at New Romney, too, dipped into their Port’s coffers to gain the friendship of the steward, HMC 5th Rep. 542. and Rye often paid his expenses, in particular for his work following the annexation of Tenterden as a member-port. E. Suss. RO, Rye mss, acct. bk. 60/2, ff. 12, 25v, 28, 102v, 108. Greenford’s relations with Winchelsea were closer than with the other Ports, for he acted as a jurat there in the early 1440s, and it was Winchelsea which chose him as one of the Ports’ bailiffs at the Yarmouth herring fair in 1441.

Greenford continued to be regularly employed by the Ports throughout the 1440s, receiving his instructions at the Brodhull. Besides suing in the Exchequer for the advocants’ allowance of the parliamentary fifteenths, his tasks included seeking the discharge of certain Portsmen from Romney, and examining the process in an action for debt unlawfully brought by the men of Rye against Folkestone. He was awarded £3 for his costs in a chancery suit against the rulers of Great Yarmouth, and a further 26s. 8d. ‘to drawe out the articles of the charter’. White and Black Bks. 15-16, 18. It was as a deputy from Dover (rather than Winchelsea as hitherto) that he attended Brodhulls in 1446 and 1448. Ibid. 21, 22, 24, 25. His role at Dover castle also encompassed the stewardship of the admiralty court held there, although on one occasion he and Walter Stratton* of Dover were summoned to Chancery to answer a London merchant contesting the court’s judgement. C1/72/46. The nature of the problems facing the Ports frequently required litigation to be put in process, and the consultation of legal precedents. Thus the practice grew up of appointing senior members of the Brodhull ‘to solicit’ a case with the warden or in one of the royal courts in the Ports’ common interest. In the person of the steward of Dover castle there was a lawyer near at hand who could be an able go-between for Ports and warden. White and Black Bks. p. xx.

The duke of Gloucester’s death in 1447 and the appointment of James Fiennes*, now created Lord Saye and Sele, as his successor, did not affect Greenford’s position at Dover castle. However, it was Winchelsea which returned him to Parliament, in the autumn of 1449. The full extent of his property holdings in the liberty of the Port is not known, although as a Portsman of Winchelsea he could claim exemption from taxation on his chattels at Ore, doing so from the mid 1440s, E179/228/131; 229/138. and later on he held the manor of Wickham in Icklesham. VCH Suss. ix. 187. Furthermore, Greenford’s wife was the daughter of a former parliamentary baron and mayor of the Port, and may well have brought him land in the neighbourhood. Whether it was expected that while in the Commons he would provide assistance to Lord Saye (now also the treasurer of England) as well as looking to the interests of the Ports is not clear; but there is nothing to indicate that he was in Saye’s company when the third and last session of the Parliament, held at Leicester, closed abruptly in early June 1450 as news came of Cade’s rebellion in the south-east, and the King and his council returned to London. Saye was executed by the rebels on 4 July, and unrest continued in Kent long afterwards. On 10 Sept. Greenford’s property at Lydden came under attack, with evildoers forcibly stealing from his wife the sum of 20s. in money. R. Virgoe, ‘Ancient Indictments in K.B.’, in Med. Kentish Soc. (Kent Rec. Ser. xviii), 255. Yet this may have been an opportunistic robbery rather than a consequence of Greenford’s employment by the late warden. Saye’s replacement the duke of Buckingham retained Greenford in office at Dover castle, and the Ports continued to require his services. For instance, the Brodhull of June 1452 authorized him to petition the Crown for safe conducts for boats in their fishing fleet. White and Black Bks. 30.

Greenford appeared at Canterbury for the parliamentary elections of 1453 to attest the return of the knights of the shire for Kent, at least one of whom, William Hextall*, was a retainer of the warden. Along with Hextall he was regularly appointed to royal commissions, notably to look into the illegal seizure of ships contrary to truces, and, in the later 1450s, to hold sessions of oyer and terminer. Yet to all appearances his career was affected neither by Buckingham’s death at the battle of Northampton in July 1460 nor by other events of the civil war. He again attested the Kent elections in the autumn of 1460, and continued in his role of steward of Dover under the next warden, the earl of Warwick, a regular absentee. In 1464 the Ports’ representatives asked Greenford to examine the draft charter and give them his advice before making a ‘new book’ of the same; indeed, he continued to act as an intermediary between the barons and the warden, whose help needed to be obtained to further a petition to Edward IV for confirmation of the liberties. Ibid. 51. Although Greenford’s appointments to royal commissions tailed off in the 1460s, this cannot be taken as a sign that his loyalty to the Yorkist regime was questioned. After Warwick’s fall in 1471 he was named on the quorum of the bench in Kent, and it is possible that he remained in his post as steward until he died. The politics and conflict of the period played no part in determining the course of his career.

By Edward IV’s reign Greenford had become a well-respected Kentish esquire, with lands worth in excess of £40 p.a., as is clear from the distraint for knighthood levied against him in 1465. Lydden continued to be his principal place of residence, and pardons he obtained refer to him as ‘late of London, gentleman, alias of Lydden, alias late of Winchelsea’ (in 1458) or ‘of Lydden and London, gentleman’ (in 1465). C67/42, m. 22; 45, m. 6. His standing both with regard to the gentry of Kent and the barons of the Ports is indicated by the marriages he was able to arrange for his two daughters and coheirs: Alice married into the prominent Kentish family of Monyn, while Agnes was wedded to the royal bailiff of Winchelsea, John Copledyke†. Alice seems to have been the more highly favoured of the two. In his will, dated 24 Jan. 1474, Greenford left her and her husband John Monyn the reversion, after the death of his widow, of his manor of Swanton, together with substantial holdings in the neighbourhood, which were entailed on them and their line, as well as an annuity of £1 for five years and the sum of £2 to John Monyn ‘filiolo meo’. Agnes Copledyke was simply to have an annuity of £4 for five years, her son Richard £2 and her daughter Margaret five marks a year until she should have received £50 for her marriage. Yet it may be the case that Agnes received Greenford’s Sussex properties, which are not mentioned in his will. The testator wished to be buried near the font in Lydden church, and made bequests for the making of new pews, the paving of the chancel and the glazing of a window in the south side, ‘where the curate and I have been accustomed to perform the canonical hours’. Probate was granted on 13 June. His widow was sole executor. PCC 15 Wattys (PROB11/6, f. 110), printed in Archaeologia Cantiana, xliii. 7-8, 14-16. For a suit over Swanton brought in the 16th cent. by Greenford’s gt. gds. John Bedingfield, see C1/465/29.