Brewer's: Green Cloth

The Board of Green Cloth. A board connected with the royal household, having power to correct offenders within the verge of the palace and two hundred yards beyond the gates. A warrant from the board must be obtained before a servant of the palace can be arrested for debt, So called “because the committee sit with the steward of the household at a board covered with a green cloth in the counting-house, as recorders and witnesses to the truth.” It existed in the reign of Henry I., and probably at a still earlier period.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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