Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/49

 made governor of Meaux, the eldest being Sir Henry Fortescue [q. v.], sometime chief justice of the common pleas in Ireland, and the third Sir Richard Fortescue, who was killed at the battle of St. Albans in 1455 (see the family pedigree in supplement to Family History). The date of his birth cannot be precisely stated, but it was certainly before the beginning of the fifteenth century. He is said to have been educated at Exeter College, Oxford; he was a ‘gubernator’ of Lincoln's Inn in 1425, 1426, and 1429 (, Orig. Jud. p. 257: in the first two years he is called ‘Fortescue junior’), and in 1429 or 1430 he received the degree of serjeant-at-law. No one, he says in the ‘De Laudibus,’ chap. 1., had received this degree who had not spent at least sixteen years in the general study of the law, which enables one to form a guess as to the date of his birth (but cf. De Natura Legis Naturæ, ii. 10, and, p. 40). Thenceforth his name appears with increasing frequency in the year-books. About 1436 he married the daughter of John Jamyss of Philips Norton in Somersetshire. In an exchequer record of 20 Hen. VI he is mentioned as a justice of assize (Kal. Exch. iii. 381). In 1442 he was made chief justice of the king's bench, and was soon afterwards knighted. Frequent references to him occur in the privy council records for the following years. In 1443 he sat on a commission of inquiry into certain disturbances in Norwich caused by ecclesiastical exactions, and received the thanks of the council for ‘his grete laboures’ in the matter; and later in the year he was member of another commission to inquire into similar disturbances in Yorkshire. From 1445 to 1455 he was appointed by each parliament one of the triers of petitions. In a grant of 1447 admitting Fortescue and his wife to the fraternity of the convent of Christchurch, Canterbury, we find him thus described in the reasons for his admission: ‘Vir equidem justus, quem omnes diserti justum discernunt, obsequuntur, venerantur, et diligunt, cum et omnibus velit prodesse sed obesse nulli, nemini nocens sed nocentes prohibens’ (, p. 48), and this agrees with the character which tradition has given to him. A few years afterwards, however, he appears as an object of popular displeasure. In Cade's proclamation (1450), in which an inquiry by some true justice is demanded, it is said: ‘Item, to syt upon this enqwerye we refuse no juge except iij chefe juges, the which ben fals to beleve’ (Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, Camd. Soc. p. 98, see also p. 102; and, Political Poems and Songs, ii. lvii n.); and Sir John Fastolf's servant writing in 1451 says: ‘The Chief Yistice hath waited to ben assauted all this sevenyght nyghtly in hes hous, but nothing come as yett, the more pite’ (, Paston Letters, i. 185). Probably the only reason for his unpopularity was that he was known to belong to the court party; for as judge there is every reason to believe that he was distinguished for his impartiality. Among the cases with which he had to deal as chief justice may be mentioned that of Thomas Kerver, a prisoner in Wallingford Castle, whom he refused to release on the simple command of the king (, Life, p. 10); and Thorpe's case (31 Hen. VI), in which he and Prisot, chief judge of the common pleas, expressed the opinion of all the judges that they ought not to answer the question put to them by the lords whether the speaker, who had been arrested during the recess, should be set at liberty, ‘for it hath not been used aforetime, that the judges should in any wise determine the privilege of this high court of parliament’ (13 Rep. p. 64;, i. 29; , Const. Hist. iii. 491). The cases in the year-books (21 Hen. VI–38 Hen. VI) in which Fortescue took part as chief justice are reprinted, with a translation, in the appendix to Lord Clermont's edition of his works. After the battle of Northampton in 1460 the fortunes of Fortescue followed those of the house of Lancaster, to which he remained faithful as long as any hope remained. Whether he was among the judges who declined to advise on the Duke of York's claim to the crown or had accompanied the queen to Wales does not appear. But he was present at the battle of Towton in 1461 (Collections of a London Citizen, Camd. Soc. p. 217, where he is called ‘the Lord Foschewe’), and was included in the act of attainder passed against those who had taken part against the new king, Edward IV. At the time of his attainder he was a man of considerable landed property, acquired through his wife and by his own purchases (see, pp. 42–4). He spent the next two years in Scotland with the deposed family, and wrote several treatises in favour of the title of the house of Lancaster, including the ‘De Natura Legis Naturæ.’ The question has been discussed whether Fortescue was ever Henry VI's chancellor, as he describes himself in the ‘De Laudibus;’ the better opinion is that he was only chancellor ‘in partibus’ (, Lord Chancellors, i. 367;, iv. 312; , p. 57; , pp. 15–17). In 1463 he followed Queen Margaret to Flanders, and remained abroad, living in poverty, with her and the Prince of Wales till 1471, first at