Page:An Inquiry into the Authenticity of certain Papers and Instruments attributed to Shakspeare.djvu/48

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next specimen shall be taken from Sir John Fortescue’s Treatise on The Difference between an absolute and limited Monarchy. He was probably born about the year that Chaucer died, and in the twentieth year of King Henry the Sixth (1441–2) was made Lord Chief Justice of England. Whether he composed this curious work before or after he retired into France with Prince Edward and his mother, after the battle of Tewksbury in 1471, has not been ascertained.