Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Green, Hugh
GREEN, HUGH, alias Ferdinand Brooks (1584?–1642), catholic martyr, born about 1584, was the son of a 'citizen and goldsmith in the parish of St. Giles, London.' Both his parents were protestants, and he was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. Subsequently he travelled on the continent, and became a Roman catholic. He was received into the English College at Douay in 1609, and on 7 July 1610 he took the college oath, and was admitted an alumnus. He was confirmed at Cambray on 25 Sept. 1611, advanced to minor orders, and ordained sub-deacon at Arras on the following 17 Dec., deacon on 18 March, and priest on 14 June 1612. He left the college on 6 Aug. 1612, with the intention of joining the order of Capuchins, but ultimately proceeded to the English mission. Here for nearly thirty years he exercised his functions in various places under the name of Ferdinand Brooks. When Charles I in 1642 issued the proclamation commanding all priests to depart the realm within a stated time, Green, who was then at Chideock Castle, Dorsetshire, as chaplain to Lady Arundell, resolved to withdraw to the continent. Lady Arundell besought him to stay at Chideock, pointing out that the day fixed in the proclamation had already expired. Green, however, thinking there was yet time, proceeded to Lyme, and was boarding a vessel bound for France, when he was seized by a custom-house officer, carried before a justice of the peace, and by him committed to Dorchester gaol. On 17 Aug. 1642, after five months' close confinement, he was tried and sentenced to death by Chief-justice Foster. Two days later he was executed on a hill outside Dorchester under circumstances of the most terrible cruelty, being then in the fifty-seventh year of his age. A pious lady, Mrs. Elizabeth Willoughby, who attended him at the scaffold, wrote a minute narrative of his death, published in Jean Chifflet's 'Palmæ Cleri Anglicani,' 12mo, Brussels, 1645, p. 75.
[Gillow's Bibl. Dict. of English Catholics, iii. 18-24; De Marsys, De la Mort glorieuse de plusieurs Prestres, 1645, pp. 86-93; Challoner's Missionary Priests, 1741-2, ii. 215; Dodd's Church Hist. 1737, iii. 86.]