Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/44

 There is unfortunately no complete record of the trial extant; from the accounts given in Strype's ‘Annals’ (vol. i. pt. i. pp. 555–6), and Wright's ‘Queen Elizabeth’ (i. 121, 127, 129), their design seems to have been singularly wild and foolish. They proposed as soon as they arrived in Flanders to proclaim Arthur Pole, the elder of the brothers, Duke of Clarence; to persuade Mary Queen of Scots to marry Edmund Pole the younger brother, Arthur being already married to a daughter of the Earl of Northumberland; to obtain from the Duc de Guise a force of five or six thousand men, with whom they hoped to return to Wales, proclaim Queen Mary, overthrow the existing government, and restore the ancient religion.

Before setting out on this remarkable expedition they had consulted two conjurers, by name John Prestall and Edward Cosyn, who, with two servants of Lord Hastings and a person named Barwick, were arrested and included in the indictment. These conjurers had succeeded in raising a ‘wicked spryte’ who prophesied that all would go well with their designs, and that Queen Elizabeth would die a natural death before the next summer. A more serious clause of the accusation charged Fortescue with obtaining countenance and help from the French and Spanish ambassadors. All the accused were convicted and condemned to death, but their lives were spared by the queen, and their sentences commuted to imprisonment in the Tower. There, between 1565 and 1578, both the Poles died, while Fortescue, at what date is unknown, was released or allowed to escape. He probably owed his freedom to the influence of his brother Sir John, who was highly esteemed by Elizabeth. Of the remainder of his career nothing is known; he is spoken of as living, probably abroad, in his brother Thomas Fortescue's will, dated May 1608.

Sir Anthony left three sons, Anthony, John, and George; his grandson Anthony, son of his eldest son, was appointed by Charles, duke of Lorraine, his resident at the English court, and was expelled from the country by a resolution of the House of Commons, 16 Oct. 1644 (Commons' Journals, iii. 667).

[Lord Clermont's Hist. of the Family of Fortescue.] 

FORTECUE, EDMUND (1610–1647), royalist commander, was born in 1610 at his father's seat of Fallapit, South Devon. In 1642 he was appointed high sheriff of the county of Devon. It was an object of considerable importance to the king to secure as sheriffs trustworthy men of local influence, and the selection of so young a man as Fortescue, whose father was still living, implies that he had already secured himself a reputation for courage or ability.

In the beginning of December 1642 Fortescue summoned the posse comitatus of the county to meet him at Modbury, in order to join Sir Ralph Hopton, who was then marching from Cornwall to besiege Plymouth. About two thousand men answered the summons and assembled on 6 Dec., intending on the next day to join the main army, whose headquarters were at Plympton, only three miles distant. During the night Colonel Ruthven, commanding the parliamentary forces at Plymouth, organised a sortie from that town of some five hundred dragoons, who, avoiding the village of Plympton, fell upon Fortescue's train-bands at Modbury. These raw recruits dispersed at the first alarm, and the troopers at once occupied the village. They then proceeded to Modbury Castle, a seat of the Champernoune family, fired the house, broke in and took prisoners Fortescue himself and his brother Peter, Sir Edward Seymour and his eldest son, M.P. for Devonshire, Arthur Basset, ‘a notable malignant,’ and a number of other gentlemen. The victorious cavalry then marched to Dartmouth, whence they despatched their prisoners by sea to London (Remarkable Passages newly received of the great Overthrow of Sir Ralph Hopton, at Mudburie. With the taking of the High Sheriffe, &c. 1642). On his arrival in London, Fortescue was sent to Windsor Castle: an inscription on the wall of a small chamber, close to the Round Tower, consisting of his name with a rude cut of his coat of arms and the words ‘Pour le Roy C.,’ serves to identify the room in which he was imprisoned. He was afterwards transferred to Winchester House, and before the end of 1643 was exchanged or released. On 9 Dec. 1643 Fortescue received a commission from Prince Maurice to repair ‘the Old Bull-worke near Salcombe, now utterly ruined and decayed,’ and to hold it for the king. The fort of Salcombe or Fort Charles, as it was renamed by Fortescue, stands on a rock at the entrance of Salcombe harbour near Kingsbridge, approachable from the land at low tide, but completely surrounded by the sea at high water. An interesting manuscript account of the details of the rebuilding, fortifying, and victualling the place is printed in Lord Clermont's ‘History.’ The inventories of provisions given in this account show that nothing necessary for the support of the garrison during a prolonged siege was neglected: more than thirty hogsheads of meat, ten hogsheads of punch, ten tuns of cider, two thou-