GREEN, Thomas III

This Thomas Green was a draper and a younger man than his contemporary and namesake who was a tapicer. He does not appear in the records of Leicester until November 1445 when he witnessed a deed. In April 1448 he sat on a jury of leading townsmen before royal commissioners of inquiry, and in 1450 he was named as one of the stewards of the fair.2 Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. ed. Thompson, 345; C145/313/13. It may be that while in office he was returned to represent the borough in Parliament, but it could, with equal probability, have been his namesake who was elected. The same confusion arises with respect to the identity of the Green who sat on a jury of the town before the county j.p.s on 8 Jan. 1453 and who attested the parliamentary election of the following 1 Mar.3 KB9/270A/48; C219/16/2. It was, however, certainly the draper who was chosen to act for a second time as one of the stewards of the fair at the following Michaelmas; who, on 16 Dec. 1454, was one of a small group of leading townsmen before whom a deed was recorded at the portmanmoot; and who was elected as mayor in 1457. Since there are no certain references to Thomas Green the tapicer after 1455, it is very likely that it was the draper who was returned to the Coventry Parliament of 1459. In that year he is recorded as witnessing three Leicester deeds, and on 29 May 1459, together with a clerk, Edmund Tyllet, he was granted two gardens in the parishes of St. Peter and St. Michael by one Robert Bryan, presumably as a trustee.4 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 425-7; C219/16/5; Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. 355-6.

The 1459 Parliament may not have been Green’s last as there is evidence in the antiquarian record that he sat again in the very different political circumstances of 1461. According to a now-lost record once among the borough records, in May 1462 he joined the mayor, Robert Rawlot, and John Roberts†, then one of the bailiffs, in visiting Edward IV while the new King was at Leicester castle. As a result of their representations, the mayor and burgesses were granted an annuity of 20 marks for a term of 20 years. Green and Roberts are described here as the borough’s MPs, a reference to the Parliament which had been prorogued on the previous 21 Dec. but which was not dissolved until 6 May.5 J. Thompson, Hist. Leicester, 182; Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 279. Green probably did not live much longer thereafter. On 20 Sept. 1462 he witnessed a Leicester deed as a jurat, one of the unelected town council from which the mayor was chosen, but he was dead by August 1464 when Tyllet alone made a conveyance of the property of which they had been jointly enfeoffed.6 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 278-9, Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. 361. Nothing certain is known about his heir, although another draper, John Green, who was living in a tenement outside the East Gate in 1459, may have been his son.7 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 268.