The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green, by Cuthbert Bede
Scanned and proofed by R. W. Jones (rwj@freeshell.org). This HTML edition was produced jointly with Colin Choat (colc@gutenberg.org.au)
(PART I)
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS, DESIGNED AND DRAWN ON THE WOOD BY THE AUTHOR.
LONDON: NATHANIEL COOKE, (LATE INGRAM, COOKE, AND CO.) MILFORD HOUSE, STRAND.
1853.
LONDON: PRINTED BY ROBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKLYN, Great New Street and Fetter Lane
CONTENTS
CHAPTER

IF you will refer to the unpublished volume of Burke's Landed Gentry , and turn to letter G, article GREEN, you will see that the Verdant Greens are a family of some respectability and of considerable antiquity. We meet with them as early as 1096, flocking to the Crusades among the followers of Peter the Hermit, when one of their number, Greene surnamed the Witless, mortgaged his lands in order to supply his poorer companions with the sinews of war. The family estate, however, appears to have been redeemed and greatly increased by his great-grandson, Hugo de Greene, but was again jeoparded in the year 1456, when Basil Greene, being commissioned by Henry the Sixth to enrich his sovereign by discovering the philosopher's stone, squandered the greater part of his fortune in unavailing experiments; while his son, who was also infected with the spirit of the age, was blown up in his laboratory when just on the point of discovering the elixir of life. It seems to have been about this time that the Greenes became connected by marriage with the equally old family of the Verdants; and, in the year 1510, we find a Verdant Greene as justice of the peace for the county of Warwick, presiding at the trial of three decrepid old women, who, being found guilty of transforming themselves into cats, and in that shape attending the nightly assemblies of evil spirits, were very properly pronounced by him to be witches, and were burnt with all due solemnity.