Sir John Browne, of London, Mayor of London in 1481-82, apparently of unknown parentage, b. say 1440, d. 1 Jan. 1499 (13 Hen. VII), his inquisition post mortem being dated 8 Feb. following, and buried in the parish church of St. Mary Mary Magdalene, Milkstreet, London. In 1478 he is mentioned as “my trewe lover [i.e. friend] John Browne, Alderman of London” in the will of Sir Ralph Verney, mercer and alderman, and sometime mayor, of London. According to Yeatman, “It is stated in Metcalf’s Knights that Sir John Browne was knighted in 1483 by King Richard III, before his coronation, when the arms assigned to him were azure and chev. between three escallops or with a bordeur engrailed gules. These arms were borne by him and by his descendants, and are carved on the outside of Cubley Church in commemoration of the marriage of his grandson, John Browne, the Master of the Mint, with the coheiress of Montgomery, and most of the Derbyshire families have used these arms; but the date assigned by Metcalf for the knighthood is clearly a mistake, for he was already a Knight in 21 Edward IV.” In a writ dated 9 Feb. 1489 (3 Hen. VII) is given a recitation of a deed, dated 20 May 1476 (15 Edw. IV), which refers — perhaps prematurely so far as his knighthood is concerned — to “John Broun, knt., citizen, mercer, and alderman of London,” who in company with others “demised the … manor of Milton [near Canterbury, in Kent] to George Broun, knt., and … Elizabeth, then his wife, for their lives in survivorship.” This George Browne, who was ancestor of the Brownes of Bechworth Castle, was however probably not a kinsman of John Browne, for Yeatman remarks that the arms of the two men were “quite different.” John Browne’s i.p.m. mentions his son, William Browne senior, and the latter’s wife Catherine.

   He m. Anne Belwood, whose will was dated 12 Jan. 1503 and proved 4 March 1504, sister of Thomas Belwood, of Belton, Lincolnshire. She is doubtless the “Dame Anne Browne” mentioned among a group of persons asked to pray for his soul in the 1487 will of her son William’s father-in-law, Edmund Shaa. In the 1501 will of her son Thomas she is called “my singuler good Lady and moder Dame Anne Browne,” and 20 shillings are left to “Sr Henry Beaw my moders chapeleynd, to pray for my soule.” In her own will, in which she refers to herself as “Anne Browne, widow, late the wife of Sr John Brown Knyght, citizen … and alderman of London,” she mentions “the p’sshe church off Belton in the countie of Lincoln wher I was christened,” and refers to her son Thomas Browne, her son William Browne, her “wellbeloved brother Thomas Belwoode,” of Belton, his children Thomas,[10] John, Elizabeth Lounde, and Kateryne Belwood, her “wellbeloved sister Isabell Bellenap,” her “cosyn Margaret Haydok, widowe,” her “cosyn Dame Agneys Haydok, nonne [nun],” and her “cosyn Dame Jane Malet, nonne, of Ormesby in the Countie of Lincoln.”

Source: http://cybrary.uwinnipeg.ca/people/dobson/genealogy/ff/mainwaring/Browne.cfm