Father, nephew and son thus held some of the most influential piping roles in the county for a period of almost ninety years.
However, after 1806, Green would have had regular duties several times a year in different parts of the county in his role as Piper to the Duchess, which would surely have been incompatible with sea voyages.
In 1816, a newspaper article [2] states that the Duchess's Piper being prevented from playing there by illness, his young nephew Robert Nicholson, then 18, "just the age of the late famed Wm Lamshaw, when he bore away the prize at a musical match at Elsdon Court Baron" , deputised for him.
Over a period of decades, from 1822 until 1857, there survive newspaper accounts of William Green and Robert Nicholson playing together, for instance at a meeting of the Society for the Improvement of the English Marygold, in 1816.
[5] Nicholson died in Morpeth, on 11 October 1842, "unrivalled as a musician on the Northumberland small pipes, and was one of the Duchess of Northumberland's late pipers" [6] and there are subsequent accounts of William and Tom Green, playing together; these include a Burns Supper in North Shields, the Duke's manorial court in Newburn, and the launch of a ship in West Hartlepool.
He was a tall man, more than six feet in height, and 'with a muscular development that entitled him to be classed among the forms gigantic', he cut an imposing figure.
Despite his massive build, he was something of an athlete: 'and this welterweight could have been backed to any amount to run one hundred yards against any individual in the county'.
It also states that he originated the 'new arrangement' of duet playing, so that with the aid of his nephew Robert Nicholson, or of his own son Tom, he achieved results of which the older instrument, with a single-octave compass, had been incapable.
In 1857 he had performed at Alnwick Castle, together with his son Tom and with James Reid, to provide musical illustrations for a report of the Ancient Melodies Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne to the Duke.
"[8] Green also reported that his uncle William Cant had been postboy to Joseph Turnbull, the postmaster at Alnwick as well as an innkeeper and the first Ducal Piper, and that Cant had learned the instrument from him.