Family and Education

m. by Mich. 1419, Katherine.1

Offices Held

Biography

Not much is known about this MP, who may, perhaps, have fought in France during the reign of Henry V. A Thomas Green, esquire, was rewarded in April 1416 by the King with an annuity of £10 payable for life from the manor of Bilton in Yorkshire to compensate for losses sustained by him at the siege of Harfleur and the batle of Agincourt in the previous year. He was evidently with Henry at Mantes in the spring of 1419, since he then received a second reward in the shape of lands in Alençon and Evreux which had been confiscated from a French rebel.2

We can more confidently assume that the subject of this biography was appointed in September 1411 to replace one of the trustees of the late Sir William Curwen’s* estates in Westmorland and Cumberland. In 1419 he and his wife, Katherine, were confirmed in possession of substantial holdings in the Westmorland villages of Casterton and Sedgwick, which were then entailed upon their issue. Since neither Green nor William Beauchamp, his colleague in the 1420 Parliament, could boast much in the way of local influence or administrative experience, it may well be that the electors had some difficulty in finding representatives ready to make the long journey to Westminster, especially when the King was absent overseas. But Green did not lack powerful friends; and in July 1421 he offered sureties at the Exchequer for the judge, John Preston*, as keeper of Sir John Lumley’s estates in the north-west.3

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: C.R.

Notes

• 1. CP25(1)249/8/21.
• 2. CPR, 1416-22, p. 2; DKR, xli. 783.
• 3. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xiv. 400-2; CP25(1)249/8/21; CFR, xiv. 392.