GREEN, John I

Green was the only lawyer to represent Sandwich in Henry VI’s Parliaments and as such he played a leading role in the government of the town and wider administration of the Cinque Ports throughout the first half of the fifteenth century. His parentage and early life are obscure, but he was established enough in Sandwich by 1404 to be employed as town clerk. In June 1422 he was one of four local men, including the mayor (William Gayler†) and Robert Church*, who entered a recognizance to appear before the King’s council concerning the Portsmen’s dispute with the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury. A few weeks earlier a group of townsmen had attacked the monks’ wharf at Sandwich, throwing a crane into the sea and threatening to mete out similar treatment to the monks themselves should they dare to enter the town. The monks had complained to the council which had ordered the Portsmen to appear before it and explain themselves. However, before they did so both parties accepted arbitration and entered into an agreement confirming the priory’s rights to the wharf.3 CCR, 1419-22, p. 265; Boys, 368-9; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 170. That November Green was elected to Henry VI’s first Parliament alongside Church, with whom he had worked in settling this matter. They were to be returned together on two further occasions, in October 1423 and October 1427, although the circumstances of their election and their business at Westminster is not known in either case.

Green’s expertise was also employed by the other Ports and in 1428, along with Thomas Barton, the common clerk of New Romney, and Richard Huntingdon* of Hastings, he travelled to Westminster to plead on behalf of the Portsmen concerning their customary exemption from parliamentary taxation, a task for which he was paid five marks. In the following year he was also paid 20s. by the men of Dover for business conducted with the lieutenant of Dover castle.4 Add. 29615, f. 124; Egerton 2105, f. 7. It seems likely that he joined the ranks of Sandwich’s jurats at around this time, although the lack of local records obscures the actual date. In December 1431, however, he was chosen as mayor and on 10 Apr. the following year, during his term of office, he was elected to his fourth Parliament. Eighteen days later he and his fellow parliamentary baron, Robert Wilde*, were also empowered to treat with the men of Great Yarmouth concerning a settlement of the long-running dispute between the respective bailiffs of the Cinque Ports and that town during the annual herring fair. The Parliament of 1432 opened on 12 May and closed on 17 July, and although the details of Green’s service are again unclear he was certainly absent from Sandwich on 2 June, when Henry Cock* deputized for him as mayor, although he was back home by 26 June to hold the mayor’s court in person. While at Westminster he was doubtless instrumental in obtaining a confirmation, dated 3 June, of the royal charter granted to Sandwich in 1421.5 ‘Old Black Bk.’, ff. 2v, 3v, 5; CPR, 1429-36, p. 194. In the following December Green returned to the ranks of the jurats, but he continued to be employed on extraordinary business both by Sandwich and the Ports generally. On 8 July 1433 he was elected as one of the bailiffs to the Yarmouth herring fair and was present 12 days later when his appointment was confirmed at a meeting of the Brodhull. On their return home in December the bailiffs presented a schedule of injuries caused by the men of Yarmouth against the liberties of the Ports, whereupon the Brodhull decided that Green should ride to Westminster with John Tamworth* of Hastings to prosecute a suit against those involved. Thereafter he was regularly chosen to travel to New Romney where he attended every meeting of the Brodhull from then until July 1438.6 White and Black Bks. of Cinque Ports (Kent Rec. Ser. xix), 1-11. During this period he was often appointed to go to Westminster to sue for the Ports’ customary exemption from the parliamentary subsidy. His costs were met by the Ports as a whole and in 1435-6 both Dover and New Romney paid money to him in that respect.7 Add. 29810, f. 2v; E. Kent Archs., New Romney recs., assmt. bk. 1384-1446, NR/FAc 2, f. 122. At the same time he continued to play a prominent part in the affairs of his home town and in January 1436 he deputized for the absent mayor of Sandwich, Robert White*. In 1437, on the instructions of the Brodhull, he accompanied Thomas Pope* of Rye to Westminster to sue for a general pardon for the Ports (which was eventually granted in July).8 NR/FAc 2, f. 126v. In July 1438 he deputized for the King’s bailiff of Sandwich, something he may also have done at an earlier stage in his career.9 At some point before 1432 Andrew Jacobson, a Dutchman, complained to the chancellor that Green, ‘baylly de la ville de Sandwych’ had unlawfully seized his ship. No record of Green’s appointment to the office survives and he did not render account as such; it seems likely that he was in fact deputizing for the bailiff on this earlier occasion: C1/7/47.

Green continued to serve as jurat throughout into the 1440s, and his status in the town is reflected by the frequency with which he was chosen as a keeper of the keys to the common chest and by the four occasions (in 1435, 1436, 1441 and 1444) on which he was nominated (albeit without success) as a candidate for the mayoralty. Between April 1440 and September 1448 he also attended 12 meetings of the Brodhull (although his attendance was not as regular as it had been during the previous decade).10 White and Black Bks. 13-25. On 20 May 1445 he was once again elected as one of the parliamentary barons for Sandwich, alongside the mayor, John Boteler III*. While Parliament was still in session he attended the coronation of Margaret of Anjou at Westminster abbey, then being one of the four barons chosen to carry the royal canopy. Two years later, in July 1447, he was among the jurats who attended the first court of Shepway held by the new warden of the Cinque Ports, James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele.11 ‘Old Black Bk.’, ff. 67, 71. Some measure of Green’s standing in the Ports can be gauged by the debts owed to him by the chamberlains of Dover: in 1440-1 these stood at £5 2s. 9d. for services rendered (mainly at the Exchequer) and three years later they still amounted to £4 4s. 5d.12 Add. 29810, ff. 29v, 50v.

In 1431-2, ‘de amore quem habuit in dictam villam et communitatem’, Green had made a grant of pasture outside the walls of Sandwich to provide for archery practice, and he frequently acted as feoffee and executor for local men.13 Boys, 63-64, 370. Yet his relations with his neighbours were not always cordial. Indeed, he could be something of a trouble-maker. In April 1430 the then warden of the Ports, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, had been ordered to arrest him, his brother, Adam, and another man, as owners and victuallers of two Sandwich ships which had allegedly attacked and seized a Flemish vessel off Plymouth.14 CPR, 1429-36, p. 73. He was also frequently in dispute over the payment of expenses incurred while serving Sandwich and the Ports as a whole. His term as mayor ended in acrimony over debts due to him for his wages, and the following year he quarrelled over his costs in securing the Ports’ exemption from the parliamentary subsidy. On 25 July 1441 he presented his accounts to a meeting of the Brodhull, where he was allowed 13 marks, ten of them to be paid by Sandwich and the remainder by Rye. The matter, however, was still not settled nearly a year later when it was put to the arbitration of four of the jurats of Sandwich. One of the arbiters on behalf of the commonalty on this occasion was Thomas Haddon* and it is possible that Green took exception to his judgement as in July 1443 both men entered into a recognizance for £100 to keep the peace towards one another. The following month the Brodhull, having ordered Green to present his accounts again, reduced the amount due to him to ten marks and insisted that he make restitution of any sums wrongfully received.15 ‘Old Black Bk.’, ff. 57v, 62; White and Black Bks. 15-16. In June 1448 he was in dispute with a local landowner, Walter Langley, the jurat William Fennell* and another man, and again he entered into recognizances to keep the peace and abide by the mayor and jurats’ arbitration in the matter. Another quarrel saw him three years later in contention with the brethren of St. Bartholomew’s hospital, Sandwich, to whom the jurats ordered him to pay a disputed annual rent of 6s.16 ‘Old Black Bk.’, ff. 73, 83.

Not surprisingly Green was also a frequent litigant in the law courts at Westminster, many of the suits arising from his employment as a feoffee and executor. In 1434 he had acquired certain property in Sandwich from Richard Beche of Colchester and his wife, Margaret. This, it was later alleged by the widowed Margaret in a Chancery petition, had formed part of her dower, but notwithstanding that the transaction had been duly recorded in a final concord, Green had unreasonably sued Beche’s executors for an obligation of £20 made by Richard to complete the sale.17 CP25(1)/115/308/364; C1/10/190. In another petition in Chancery around the same time the Hythe lawyer, Stephen Alby*, alleged that Green had failed to sell land in Sandwich of which he had been enfeoffed for the performance of William Shirbourne’s will; while in Michaelmas term 1439 he was sued for damages of £200 by Denise Shirbourne, another member of that testator’s family, for unlawful detention of a muniment chest.18 C1/68/197; CP40/711, rot. 304. Henry Cacherell, the son and heir of a leading local merchant of the same name, claimed in Chancery that his father’s executors had been instructed to pay him £300 when he reached 15 years of age, but while one of them, Henry Brice*, had complied by handing over £80, the other two, Green and David Mareys of Canterbury, had refused to do so. The widowed Margery Cacherell had married another prominent merchant, Robert Wilde, and in 1439 the latter sued Green in the court of common pleas for debts arising from the execution of Cacherell’s will. Furthermore, in Easter term 1449 Wilde alleged that Green’s fellow baron in the Parliament of 1445, John Boteler, had maintained him in his quarrel.19 C1/10/319; CP40/711, rot. 108d; 742, rot. 309; 753, rot. 258.

Green attended his last meeting of the Brodhull on 21 July 1450,20 White and Black Bks. 26. but he was still deemed to be active in the following December, then being appointed to an ad hoc commission to inquire into the spoilation of the cargo of a Geneose carrack in Sandwich, and it was most likely he who was elected to the ranks of the jurats that month. The royal commission may have been the last employment in a career that had spanned nearly 50 years, although at this stage it becomes difficult to distinguish between him and his putative son and namesake. However, our MP was certainly dead by October 1453, for by then certain lands he had leased on the archbishop of Canterbury’s manor of Sandown had recently passed from his heirs to one John Pastor.21 E. Kent Recs. (Kent Rec. Ser. vii), 78. The John Green whose arrest had been ordered on suspicion of piracy in September 1452 and who was elected a jurat of Sandwich three months later was probably the younger man, whose own career lasted into the 1470s.