GREEN, Sir Thomas

Thomas represented the senior branch of the family founded by Sir Henry Green (d.1369), c.j.KB, the profits of whose successful career funded a remarkable series of land purchases. Even though Sir Henry made very generous provision for his younger son, he still left to his heir a landed inheritance that could be rivalled by only a small handful of gentry families. In the subsidy returns of 1412 the lands of our MP’s father were assessed at an annual value of a remarkable 700 marks.5 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 225; E179/155/52. Not all of this income was drawn from Northamptonshire, where the bulk of his estates lay, for he also held valuable lands near the Lincolnshire coast, centred on the manor of Maltby le Marsh (acquired through the marriage of his paternal grandfather), in the North Riding of Yorkshire at Stonegrave and Nunnington, and in Leicestershire at Kegworth, together with lesser properties in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Nottinghamshire and London.6 CIPM, xx. 750-61: Feudal Aids, ii. 443, 449; iii. 120, 352. For the fam. ped.: G. Baker, Northants. i. 32.

Green made a handful of appearances in the records before coming of age. When only five years old he was associated with his parents in a licence from the bishop of Lincoln for the private celebration of divine service. While still a minor he made the first of his many appearances at a parliamentary election in his native shire: in company with his father and his cousin, Ralph Green†, he was at the county court on 27 Feb. 1416 to witness the election of Sir John St. John† and William Huddlestone†.7 Reg. Repingdon (Lincoln Rec. Soc. lvii), 58; C219/11/8. He may also have fought in France: his early knighthood suggests that he is to be identified with the namesake who served in the retinue of Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, in the 1417 campaign.8 E101/51/2, m. 9. He is not, however, to be identified with the ‘King’s servant’ who fought at Agincourt: CPR, 1416-22, p. 2. His father died towards the end of that year without taking measures to protect the family’s extensive estates from royal wardship, but this proved only a minor disadvantage to our MP. Either shortly before or soon after his father’s death he had found a place in the royal household, and this no doubt explains why Henry V treated him with uncharacteristic generosity. By 16 Mar. 1418, when his lands were farmed to a group of family friends, headed by Thomas Wydeville*, he had already been accorded the honour of knighthood. Even better, it was as a King’s knight that, on his 20th birthday when in the King’s company in France, he was rewarded 100 marks p.a. charged upon the Green patrimony for his maintenance during his minority.9 CFR, xiv. 224; CPR, 1416-22, p. 259; RP, v. 398.

It is not known if Green’s marriage also came into royal hands, but, whether it was his father or the King who found him a wife, he was profitably married. By 16 Dec. 1420, when the couple had a papal indult to have a portable altar, he had married the sister of Sir Edmund Ferrers (d.1435), commonly styled Lord Ferrers of Chartley.10 CPL, vii. 325. Although the principal interests of her family lay in Staffordshire and Warwickshire, they also held the manor of Bugbrooke, a few miles to the north of Green’s Norton, and it may be that this local connexion provided the immediate context of the marriage. Another possibility is that they had become known to each other through mutual service in the royal household.11 Their monumental effigies both have SS collars: VCH Northants. i. 412-13. It was unusual for the SS collar to appear on a female effigy and it may be that she, like our MP, had been a Household servant in her early years. However this may be, the bride was not only well connected – and soon to become better so with the marriage of her cousin, Isabel Despenser, to Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, in 1423 – but, although not an heiress, she also came with a landed endowment. She brought to the Greens the manors in Carshalton (Surrey), and Plumstead and Beckenham (Kent), once the property of her grandmother, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Bartholomew, Lord Burghersh (d.1369).12 VCH Surr. iv. 183; E. Hasted, Kent ed. Drake, ii. 2, 537. These were valuable holdings – in the 1480s they were let to farm at 40 marks p.a. – and no doubt they came instead of all or part of the portion which so wealthy a groom as our MP could command. If it was the King who arranged the marriage, the ward’s interests were given precedence over those of royal finance.

Sir Thomas’s wardship was not only unburdensome but it was also brief. A writ for his proof of age issued out of Chancery on 19 Apr. 1421, and depositions were heard at Northampton castle five days later. Several of these provide interesting, although probably fabricated, vignettes. The first of the deponents recalled that on the day of our MP’s birth he had been at the swainmote of the royal forest of Salcey where a yeoman of Green’s father told him about it. Another deponent remembered riding to Green’s Norton with John Harrowden† and others, bringing with them a bream, a tench and a pike, to dine with Sir Thomas on the Friday after the birth. Unfortunately, however, none of the deponents follow the common practice in such inquisitions of identifying the baby’s godparents. On 9 May the relevant escheators were ordered to give him seisin of his extensive inheritance.13 C138/61/66; CCR, 1419-22, p. 144.

Even though Green’s mother, Mary, was the daughter of a peer, she had not been the beneficiary of a large jointure settlement. In October 1398, presumably at the time of her marriage to our MP’s father, she was granted jointure in the manor of Kegworth in Leicestershire together with its appurtenant estates across the border in Nottinghamshire.14 KB27/651, rex rot. 17. Her portion was modest like her jointure. The marriage had been negotiated not by her father but by her mother and stepfather, Thomas Neville, Lord Furnival. Between Mich. 1401 and 1402 our MP’s father had been paid £15 from the manor of Wrockwardine, Salop, as part of Mary’s portion: A.J. Pollard, ‘The Talbots’ (Bristol Univ. Ph. D. thesis, 1968), 11, 453. So small an instalment is inconsistent with a large dowry. Her survival was thus not as financially troublesome to our MP as it might have been, although he must have been exasperated by her apparent failure to order her own affairs and perhaps also by the haste with which she remarried after his father’s death. By 25 July 1418 she was the wife of the obscure John Nottingham.15 CIPM, xx. 756. He is presumably to be identified with his namesake, who campaigned in both Ireland and France in the last years of Henry V: CPR, 1416-22, p. 303; C76/102, m. 8; E101/70/6/727. The couple’s failure to sue out the royal licence necessary for the widow of a tenant-in-chief cost them a fine of £200 and this seems to have been the beginning of serious financial difficulties.16 CPR, 1416-22, p. 296. On 25 Nov. 1420 Mary’s dower estates in Northamptonshire were burdened by a £400 recognizance contracted by her new husband to two London skinners (presumably to pay the fine), and she herself contracted large debts to the mercantile community of Northampton. In Hilary term 1423 Richard Wems†, a wealthy mercer of the town, sued her in the court of common pleas for a debt of no less than 320 marks, and two years later the mayor, Henry Kaysho, had an action pending against her for £34.17 CCR, 1419-22, p. 128; CP40/648, rot. 297d; 658, rot. 390d. Such claims upon her may have led her into engagements which posed a potential threat to her son’s interests. In March 1423 she sold to another townsman, Thomas Knightley*, for 50 marks, all ‘underwode and shredynges’ of trees in 44 acres of woodland in Green’s Norton, and followed this a few weeks later by selling him for £45 specified timber from Norton Wood.18 This agreement led to litigation between our MP and Knightley in 1430: CP40/679, rot. 507d. The dilapidated state of Mary’s dower properties, as described in her inqs. post mortem, imply that she might also have been guilty of asset stripping: CIPM, xxiv. 172, 175-7.

Of Sir Thomas himself little is known in the early years of his majority. There is nothing to suggest that he continued his household service after Henry V’s death and he contented himself with a purely local role. In October 1422 and April 1425 he headed the attestors to the parliamentary elections in his native county, and in the interim he was appointed to the county bench.19 C219/13/1, 3. Less happily, he also became embroiled in a dispute with a lesser neighbour, William de la Pole, whose father had purchased the manor of Grimscote, a few miles from Green’s Norton. It seems that the vendor had attempted to defraud the purchasor by antedating to before the sale a grant of a parcel of the manor to our MP’s father. By Hilary term 1423, when de la Pole sued writs of entry against our MP, the dispute had already proved troublesome to the Greens. Sir Thomas’s mother had, in November 1419, been waivered at their rival’s suit, the disputed lands seized into the King’s hands, and part of them briefly committed to de la Pole’s keeping. Clearly their rival had the upper hand, but no verdict is recorded in his writs of entry and the outcome of the dispute is unknown.20 Bridges, i. 260; C88/99/7; CPR, 1416-22, p. 283; CIPM, xx. 760; CFR, xiv. 363; KB27/639, rex rot. 9; CP40/648, rots. 302, 380.

More interesting is an undated petition Green addressed to the Commons on another matter early in the reign of Henry VI. He complained that the farmers of his estates during his minority had paid him £82 14s. 2d., in other words, the sum due to him between the royal grant of 10 Feb. 1420 and 9 May 1421 when he had livery of seisin, but that the Exchequer had refused them allowance on the purely technical grounds that the letters patent had made no mention of either at whose hands he was to receive his annuity or on what payment days. His petition met with success: on 11 Feb. 1425 the Exchequer was ordered to cease process against the farmers.21 SC8/85/4222-3; RP, v. 398-9; E159/201, brevia Hil. rot. 16.

Green was elected to Parliament on 14 Feb. 1426, only four days before it was due to assemble at Leicester. His return, in company with Thomas Wydeville, may have had a political dimension. Several supporters of Bishop Beaufort were among those who sat in the Commons, and the two Northamptonshire MPs are perhaps to be numbered among them. Wydeville’s half-brother, Richard Wydeville*, chamberlain of the duke of Bedford, was certainly an important supporter of Beaufort. In the case of Green the evidence is similarly indirect: he had probably become acquainted with Beaufort when in the royal household, and in November 1423 he had witnessed a deed of quitclaim from William, Lord Lovell, to the bishop of the manor of Edgcote, a few miles to the west of Green’s Norton.22 C219/13/4; G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 150-1; CCR, 1422-9, p. 123. Whatever the reason for his return, it is significant that this was his only recorded Parliament. This is surprising both in view of his wealth and the frequency with which he troubled to attend parliamentary elections. There can be little doubt that he could have secured further elections had he chosen to do so, and one can only assume either that some special reason led him to stand in 1426 or that his experience of the Commons proved a deterrent to its repetition. Interestingly, his father and paternal grandfather appear to have shared the same disinclination, for neither is recorded as ever having sat.

Beyond Sir Thomas’s continued appointment to the bench, on which he appears to have been active (he is known, for example, to have twice sat at Northampton early in 1430),23 KB27/678, rex rot. 1d. there is little to note of his career in the late 1420s and early 1430s. The year 1434, however, was one of dramatic domestic upheaval in that it saw the deaths of both his mother (on 13 Apr.) and first wife, Philippa, his remarkably quick and controversial remarriage and perhaps also the marriage of his young son and heir. On 16 June his inheritance was finally united in his hands when the royal order was issued to the relevant escheators to give him seisin of his mother’s dower and jointure lands.24 CFR, xvi. 166, 204-5; CIPM, xxiv. 171-7. Soon after, in the following October, he joined with Philippa in settling the advowson of the church of Great Houghton (Northamptonshire) on the influential John Throckmorton I*, a conveyance probably related to their son’s marriage to Throckmorton’s daughter, Maud.25 CP25(1)/179/94/75. This marriage had certainly taken place well before 12 Apr. 1445 when Throckmorton bequeathed to the groom silver plate pledged to him by Sir Thomas ‘to wedde and forfeyd mony aday agoo’: PCC 31 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 251v). But it was not until July 1452 that the feoffees for the implementation of the settlement conveyed in jointure to the couple the manors of Lilley, Herts., and Kegworth, Leics. (to which were added in 1459 two manors in Kent, part of the groom’s maternal inheritance): C140/13/21. Philippa must have died almost immediately after this, for before December our MP had contracted a clandestine marriage with Marina, sister of the wealthy Leicestershire esquire, John Bellers. This took place at night in the private chapel at Fawsley of his neighbour, Richard Knightley*, in the presence not only of Knightley but of several local gentry, principal among whom were John Catesby* and Everard Digby*. As the couple had dispensed with the reading of the appropriate bands, their union contravened the canon Humana concupiscentia (1342). This in itself did not threaten the validity of the marriage (it merely left the couple liable to a penance), but there was the much more serious difficulty of an impediment of spiritual consanguinity between them. Two years earlier Marina had stood as godmother to Sir Thomas’s daughter, Anne, and this relationship was sufficient to invalidate the marriage.

It is a natural assumption the couple dispensed with the normal formalities because they were aware of this difficulty, but, despite their apparent precautions, the matter came to the attention of their diocesan bishop, William Gray of Lincoln. On 7 Dec. our MP appeared before the bishop in the chapel of the episcopal manor at Lyddington (Rutland) and acknowledged the fault, but claimed, rather implausibly, that he was unaware that their spiritual relationship created an impediment. Seven days later Marina made a similar acknowledgment and the bishop imposed a minor penance upon them in respect of their clandestine marriage. At their instance, however, he postponed the sentence of a divorce until the following August when witnesses were to be examined in the parish church of Towcester where the daughter’s baptism had taken place. Here the record fails, and later evidence makes clear that the couple were not divorced even though they had not denied the spiritual impediment between them.26 Lincs. AO, Reg. Gray, ff.118v-119v. It seems that the Church viewed such spiritual impediments less seriously than those arising out of blood kinship: R.H. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in Med. Eng. 71n., 83.

Soon after, Green had difficulties of a more conventional sort. On 29 Jan. 1438 John Broughton of Broughton (Buckinghamshire), grandson of John Broughton†, sued a writ of formedon against him for property in Puxley in the south Northamptonshire parish of Passenham. In itself the property was insignificant, but appurtenant to it was the office of keeper of the royal forest of Whittlewood, an office the Greens had held continuously from 1400 and intermittently before that date.27 CPR, 1377-81, p. 180; 1399-1401, p. 317; Bridges, i. 310. Broughton’s claim was a distant one: as first cousin, twice removed, to Agnes, daughter and heir of Thomas le Forester, under an entail made in the time of Edward II. In Trinity term 1441 Green pleaded that he was not the tenant of the lands claimed. A royal pardon granted on 30 June 1441 implies that this was the truth: William Tresham*, Richard Knightley, James Swetenham and other lesser men were pardoned for acquiring without licence from our MP a tenement called ‘Pokel’, held in chief. This feoffment had been made before the death of their fellow feoffee, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, in April 1439, and it is likely that it was made with the deliberate intention of defeating the action of the ill-informed plaintiff. In any event, the action proved a fiasco. Successive sheriffs, the first of whom was Green himself, failed to return the writ summoning a jury on 12 consecutive occasions, and the case disappears from the records after 1447.28 CP40/710, rot. 106d; 722, rot. 333d; 745, rot. 299d; CPR, 1436-41, p. 565.

Green was not able to deal so easily with a spate of actions in the Exchequer of pleas which arose out of what was a financially troubled term as sheriff. They imply that the issues of his shrievalty were insufficient to cover the charges upon it or else he was more than usually incompetent in their administration. On 30 Oct. 1442 William Greneall, one of the yeomen of the chamber, sued him for his failure to pay him 6d. per day assigned on the issues of Northamptonshire, recovering over £11 in costs and damages when Green did not contest the action. Other plaintiffs quickly followed in Greneall’s footsteps: the abbot of St. James, Northampton, sued him on a broken bond; John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, Thomas atte Wode and Ralph Rolleston, the keeper of the great wardrobe, claimed he had failed to honour tallies totalling 46 marks assigned on the issues of the county; and William Wetenhale, a London grocer, complained of a false return of writ of latitat. More interesting are the suits of William Vaux* and John Parles. The former recovered £14 and damages of 50s. when, in Easter term 1443, our MP defaulted in an action for the non-payment of parliamentary wages. Parles, a defendant in an action of formedon, sued for the false return of a writ of summons to warranty. Here Green seems to have been acting in support of the plaintiffs, John Mauntell and his wife, Elizabeth, since the land claimed was at Stoke Bruerne, not far from Green’s Norton.29 E13/142, rots. 7, 14, 18, 24d, 45, 48, 53d.

In May 1446 Green was removed from the bench as the only justice dropped from the previous commission. His removal may simply have been an administrative error, a product of confusion between him and his cousin, Henry Green*, who was added to the commission at that date.30 C66/461, m. 32d. Alternatively, however, it may have been precipitated by his ill-documented dispute with a royal councillor, Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin. Early in the year Grey sued him and his servants for close-breaking in the parish of Towcester. This was more than an isolated instance of trespass – the plaintiff claimed the loss of trees, underwood and grass worth as much as £40 – and a property dispute probably underlies the action. Moreover, there may be significance in the fact that Sir Thomas’s removal from the bench coincided with his suing out of a general pardon.31 CP40/742, rot. 310; 743, rot. 91; 746, rot. 501; 749, rot. 298d; 750, rot. 446; C67/39, m.47. None the less, if this dispute with the powerful Grey was compromising, it was only briefly so for Green was restored to the bench in May 1448. More troublesome were continuing problems about his keepership of Whittlewood forest. On 9 June 1451 he sought security by suing out of Chancery an inspeximus and confirmation of the letters patent on which his title depended.32 CPR, 1446-52, p. 454. This did not deter his competitors. On the following 6 Dec. Thomas Furtho of Wicken, heir-male apparent of the gentry family settled at nearby Furtho, allegedly led a riotous entry into the lodge of ‘le Shrubbes’, an enclosed area of woodland within the forest, and 11 days later the rioters were indicted before the county j.p.s.33 Furtho pleaded a pardon in 1458: KB27/790, rex rot. 51. If later evidence is a reliable guide, ‘le Shrubbes’ was one of the five sub-divisions or ‘walks’ of the forest. In 1792 ‘Shrob Walk’ contained 295 acres: VCH Northants. ii. 348. It is unlikely that Furtho was acting in the interests of Broughton, but it may be that the entry was concerned with a later suit. In Hilary term 1454 an usher of the royal household, Thomas Corbyn, sued a writ of novel disseisin against Green for the office of keeper of ‘le Shrubbes’.34 CP40/772, rot. 318d. Here the point of issue was whether the right of appointment to this office lay in the hands of Green as hereditary keeper or in those of the King, who appointed to it in 1437 and 1450.35 CPR, 1436-41, p. 69; 1446-52, p. 417. Such a minor dispute is unlikely to have informed his political sympathies. There are, however, some indirect indications that he was favourable to the Yorkist cause in the mid 1450s. His appointment as sheriff in November 1454 during the first protectorate is unlikely to have come about unless he was politically acceptable to the duke of York. As sheriff, he was responsible for conducting the Northamptonshire election held on 6 June 1455 at which were returned William Zouche* and John Dyve*, at least one of whom was a supporter of the duke. On the following 16 Sept. he sued a writ of non molestetis directed to the Exchequer in respect of a pardon of all debts to the Crown before 8 July 1448. This pardon was a significant mark of favour if he still had outstanding debts from his first troubled term as sheriff.36 C219/16/3; E159/232, brevia Mich. rots. 15d, 28d. His pardon did not, however, protect him from actions arising out of his second term. In July 1456 William Peck, formerly clerk of the spicery and constable of Northampton castle, recovered costs and damages of over £20 for Green’s failure to pay him his fee as constable: E13/146, rots. 67d, 70d.

If, however, there is evidence to identify Sir Thomas with the supporters of the Yorkist cause, there is a stronger case for identifying his only son, Thomas, as a Lancastrian. As a young man the latter had served in the ill-starred campaign of John Beaufort, duke of Somerset, in France, and a few years later he numbered among the esquires of the royal household.37 E101/54/5, m. 2; 410/6, f. 40; 9, f. 45. These early experiences may explain why his loyalty to the ruling house was to prove stronger than his father’s. Unlike the latter, he clearly had the government’s trust in the late 1450s. In November 1456 he was appointed escheator in Northamptonshire and Rutland, and no sooner had his term of office come to an end than he was nominated to the shrievalty of the former county. By contrast our MP kept a much lower profile. The action of trespass sued against him in the court of King’s bench by Queen Margaret in 1458 may say nothing about his perceived political loyalties; but his removal from the county bench in July 1459 cannot be viewed with such neutrality.38 KB27/790, rot. 64; 791, rot. 16d; 794, rot. 14; 795, rot. 19. On this evidence alone there is little reason to doubt that, in the civil war of 1459-61, father and son were on different sides. The son, at any rate, was an active Lancastrian. On 14 May 1461, as a knight, he was among those whose estates the escheator of Northamptonshire and Rutland was ordered to seize.39 CPR, 1461-7, p. 35. This, together with his knighthood, implies his presence in the Lancastrian colours at one or more battles. Our MP fared better. Although the new King felt himself free to grant his hereditary keepership of Whittlewood to another, he was quickly able to reassert his title. No doubt had he lived longer he would have regained his place in local affairs.40 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 47, 58, 137. In the escalating political crisis of 1459-60 he had concerns closer to home. The Greens were the patrons of the small Cistercian nunnery at Sewardesley in the parish of Easton Neston near Green’s Norton. Never adequately endowed, it was now incapable of maintaining its handful of nuns. In January 1460 he successfully petitioned the bp. of Lincoln for its appropriation to the Cluniac nunnery of Delapre near Northampton: VCH Northants. ii. 125-6.

Green died on either 18 or 20 Jan. 1462.41 His inq. post mortem gives the earlier date but an early 15th cent. Book of Hours inscribed with obits of the fam. gives the later one: Add. 43473, f. 1. Writs of diem clausit extremum were quickly dispatched to the relevant escheators. The consequent returns were irregular. No inquisitions were taken until the following 30 June when four were purportedly taken on the same day. Further, the only property of which he was said to have died seised was the keepership of the forest of Whittlewood. Mention was made neither of feoffments nor of any other part of the great Green patrimony. It is likely that these irregularities reflect the interests of the heir, anxious to buy time to make peace with the new regime. In any event, the Crown seems to have been ready to accept the rather dubious returns. On the following 26 Aug. our MP’s cousin, Henry Green, Thomas Billing*, Thomas Throckmorton*, and others were able to sue out a general pardon as tenants of our MP’s lands.42 CFR, xx. 4; C140/7/4; C67/45, m. 28. Their tenure was to serve the family very well. The younger Sir Thomas survived his father by only nine months, leaving a son and heir of just one year old. The Northamptonshire inquisition jurors again mentioned only the keepership as the property of which the head of the family died sole seised. Here the Crown appears to have belatedly realized that all was not as it should be: on 2 Mar. 1463 a commission of inquiry was issued with respect to the inadequate findings of the younger Sir Thomas’s Northamptonshire inquisition. Since, however, the commission was headed by Billing its findings are unlikely to have disturbed the feoffees in their possession.43 C140/7/4; CPR, 1461-7, p. 233. Inqs. held in 1464 refer to the lands the younger Thomas held in jointure, but these were taken in the interest of the wid. not the Crown: C140/13/21. Much later, however, Hen. VII’s aggressive protection of his feudal rights led to the taking of further inqs., which found (probably fraudulently) that he died seised of all or most of the family property: CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 43, 87, 1004, 1162. Indeed, later evidence shows that they maintained their seisin until December 1473, when, after a judgement against them in Chancery on a petition sued by the younger Sir Thomas’s widow and her second husband, Richard Middleton†, they surrendered to her a life interest in the manor of Green’s Norton.44 CCR, 1468-76, no. 1145.

Our MP’s widow married another wealthy Northamptonshire landholder, Nicholas Griffin (d.1482) of Braybrooke, a match which later led to that of her elderly brother, John Bellers, to her stepdaughter, Katherine Griffin. Marina was certainly an attractive bride to one, like Nicholas, who already had issue: not only was she one of the three coheiresses-presumptive of her brother but she also had a dower interest in one of the greatest gentry inheritances in the Midlands. It seems, however, that this interest was not as valuable as it should have been. A petition presented by the couple to the chancellor in the mid 1470s provides an interesting example of the readiness of wealthy widows to accept less than their common-law entitlement. She claimed that, although at the time of their marriage Green had been seised of lands worth more than 700 marks p.a. and it was his wish that she should have her full entitlement, she had agreed with his feoffees to take as her dower lands with an annual value of only 90 marks p.a. ‘in eschueng grete variaunces that myght falle and for the pleasure of dyuers persones’. Her co-operation was ill-rewarded: if her petition is to be taken at face value, the feoffees conveyed the family’s Yorkshire estates to (Sir) William Catesby* and others to the intent that they should grant her a life interest in them. This, however, Catesby, as the last survivor of these feoffees, had consistently failed to do. It is not clear what was at issue here, but the ‘dyuers persones’ to whom she refers were probably her daughter-in-law, Maud, and Maud’s second husband, Middleton. Any diminution of her interest was certainly to their advantage.45 C1/53/257.

The series of Green tombs in the church of Green’s Norton has suffered severely from the passage of time, particularly from the ill-considered ‘restoration’ of the church in 1826.46 Gentleman’s Mag. xcvi (2), 317-18. The alabaster effigies which the Victoria County History ascribes to our MP and his first wife have, however, survived better than the other memorials. The armour of the male figure and costume of the female unmistakably date the effigies to the mid fifteenth century but it is more than a little curious to find both figures wearing the Lancastrian collar of SS. Since the editor of the Victoria County History was under the misapprehension that Sir Thomas died in 1457 the incongruity of such a decoration in the political circumstances of the early 1460s gave him no cause to hesitate in his attribution. Two resolutions of this difficulty suggest themselves. The first, and most likely, is that the effigies were made in our MP’s lifetime, after his first wife’s death but before the first deposition of Henry VI. The second is that they were made during the Readeption.47 VCH Northants. i. 412-13.

When compared with other contemporary gentry distinguished by their great wealth, like Sir Richard Vernon*, Sir Thomas Chaworth*, and his cousin, Henry Green, Sir Thomas Green’s long career was a low key one. He was, however, well connected and his neighbours no doubt accorded him the respect his acres commanded. He was certainly a popular choice as a feoffee among the leaders of local society. Early in his career he acted in that role for William, Lord Zouche (d.1462), Sir John Trussell† and William Brauncepath*, and later did so for his brother-in-law, John Bellers, and his kinsman, John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury (d.1453).48 CAD, iv. A9098; C1/11/139, 263; CP25(1)/179/93/35; CP40/746, rot. 324; CPR, 1446-52, p. 246. He also developed a close enough relationship with Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, to call upon him to act as feoffee in a disputed property and perhaps also to employ him as a broker in the marriage of his heir.49 CPR, 1436-41, p. 565.

The male line of the Greens failed when our MP’s grandson, another Sir Thomas, died on 9 Nov. 1506 leaving two daughters as his coheiresses. Very soon after her father’s death the eldest, Anne (b.c.1489), took as her husband, Sir Nicholas Vaux†, a prominent courtier some 30 years her senior, who, partly because of the lands she brought him, was elevated to the peerage in 1523. Her younger sister, Maud (c.1493-1531), was married in similar circumstances: Henry VII granted her hand to Sir Thomas Parr, another courtier and the son of Vaux’s first wife. She was the mother of Queen Katherine Parr and William Parr, marquess of Northampton.50 Baker, ii. 60: CP, ix. 669; xii (2), 218-19.