Family and Education

Offices Held

Biography

This Member, elected ‘at the instance and motion’1 of Charles, 8th Lord Mountjoy, high steward of the town, has not been identified. The namesake who sat for Poole in 1563 and 1572 had some connexion with Mountjoy’s father, but he was almost certainly dead by 1597 and no kinsman of this name has been discovered.

Of a number of possible William Greens, perhaps the most likely to have been the Portsmouth Member was born in 1547, the younger son of John Green of Great Milton, Oxfordshire, who married Anne, daughter of Anthony Bustard of Adderbury, by whom he had at least three sons and three daughters. He succeeded his elder brother in 1564 and was knighted in 1603, having served as an Oxfordshire j.p. from 1592 and been sheriff of the county 1600-1. Little is known of this man’s career, and no connexion with Mountjoy has been discovered. He died in February 1622 and was buried at Great Milton.2

Whoever he was, the Member for Portsmouth was named to three committees in the course of the 1597 Parliament, concerned with husbandry and tillage (26 Nov.), the city of Bristol (28 Nov.) and malt (12 Jan. 1598).3

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: Roger Virgoe

Notes

• 1. R. East, Portsmouth Recs. 149.
• 2. Vis. Oxon. (Harl. soc. v), 222; PCC 68 Noodes; C142/274/67.
• 3. D’Ewes, 564, 578; Townhend, Hist. Colls. 109.