Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/56

 sets were afterwards incorporated in Roscoe's edition of Pope, ix. 359, &c., and in Elwin and Courthope's edition (Letters, iv.), ix. 96–146. They are the simple and unaffected effusions of the poet's friendship. In most editions of Pope's works appears a letter purporting to be sent by Gay to Fortescue (9 Aug. 1718) on the death of the two lovers by lightning at Stanton Harcourt, but it was in reality written to Miss Blount by Pope. Through the latter's advice the woods at Buckland were much improved by their owner. A letter from Fortescue to Lord Macclesfield belonged to Lord Ashburnham (Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Rep. App. pt. iii. 12). His portrait was painted by Hudson, and engraved by Faber in 1741.



FORTH,. [See, 1572–1651.]

FORTREY, SAMUEL (1622–1681), author of ‘England's Interest and Improvement, consisting in the increase of the Store and Trade of this Kingdom,’ Cambridge, 1663, is described on the title-page as ‘one of the gentlemen of his majesties most honourable privy chamber.’ He may be identified with Samuel Fortrey of Richmond and Byall Fen, Isle of Ely, clerk of the deliveries of the ordnance in the Tower of London, and a bailiff in the corporation of the Great Level. This Samuel Fortrey, born 11 June 1622, was eldest son of Samuel Forterie, a merchant of Walbrooke Ward, London, who was grandson of John de la Forterye, a refugee from Lille, and owned a house at Kew, eventually bought by Queen Charlotte. Fortrey married, 23 Feb. 1647, Theodora Josceline, the child for whom Elizabeth Josceline [q. v.] wrote ‘The Mother's Legacie to her Unborn Childe.’ He died in Feb. 1681. His third son, James, groom of the bedchamber to James II, married Lady Bellasyse. ‘England's Interest and Improvement’ was reprinted in 1673, 1713, and 1744; in Sir Charles Whitworth's ‘Scarce Tracts on Trade and Commerce, serving as a supplement to Davenant's Works,’ 1778, and in the Political Economy Club's ‘Select Collection of Early English Tracts on Commerce’ (ed. McCulloch), 1856. It is a weak and rambling tract, without definite aim. Its most specific advice is that immigration and enclosure should be encouraged, and that the king should set a good example by preferring fabrics of home manufacture. It was for many years frequently referred to by financial writers in consequence of a very circumstantial statement contained in it to the effect that the value of the English imports from France was 2,600,000l., and the value of the exports to France 1,000,000l., ‘by which it appears that our trade with France is at least sixteen hundred thousand pounds a year clear lost to this kingdom.’



FORTUNE, ROBERT (1813–1880), traveller and botanist, was born at Kelloe in the parish of Edrom, Berwickshire, 16 Sept. 1813. After education in the parish school and apprenticeship in local gardens, he entered the Edinburgh Botanical Garden, and became subsequently superintendent of the indoor-plant department in the Royal Horticultural Society's garden at Chiswick. In 1842 he was sent as collector to the society to China. He visited Java on his way out in 1843 and Manilla in 1845, returning to England in 1846 after many adventures from shipwreck, pirates, hostile natives, and fever. He entered the city of Loo-chow, then closed to Europeans, disguised as a Chinaman. Among the many beautiful and interesting plants which he then sent home were the double yellow rose and the fan-palm (Chamærops Fortunei) that bear his name, the Japanese anemone, many varieties of the tree-peonies, long cultivated in North China, the kumquat (Citrus japonica), Weigela rosea, and Dicentra spectabilis, besides various azaleas and chrysanthemums. He was appointed curator of the Chelsea Botanical Garden, but had to resign in 1848 on his return to China to collect plants and seeds of the tea-shrub on behalf of the East India Company. In 1847 he published ‘Three Years' Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China, including a Visit to the Tea, Silk, and Cotton Countries, with an Account of the Agriculture and Horticulture of the Chinese.’ In 1851 he successfully introduced two thousand plants and seventeen thousand sprouting seeds of the tea into the north-west provinces of India, as described in his ‘Report upon the Tea Plantations in the North-west Provinces,’ London, 1851, 8vo; ‘A Journey to the Tea Countries of China,’ London, 1852, 8vo; and