Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/692

 678 V. BENCH AND BAR discredit is thrown on the portrait by the portcullis of the Tudors, next to the clasp of the collar, which was not intro- duced until Henry VII, 's time. The EUzabethan ruff is hardly the attire we should expect in the Yorkist age. Coke, however, who knew nothing about it, says that the picture is a very good likeness. But the monumental effigy of Little- ton, possibly authentic, shows a kneeling figure. Out of his mouth issues the motto tmg dieu et ung roy, and the face has the smooth look of a Yorkist courtier, but indicating the keenness of intellect required for the systematizer of the nice discriminations of the law of real estate. Littleton was simply a great lawyer and judge, but his greatest contemporary was more than a great lawyer and judge; he was an enlightened statesman, a gallant soldier, a writer of transcendent merit upon constitutional law, and a scholar whose words upon his profession possess a peculiar charm even for men wholly unacquainted with legal lore. John Fortescue was a lineal descendant of the knight (Le Fort Escu) who bore the shield of William the Conqueror at Hastings. Educated at Exeter College, Oxford, For- tescue was trained for the bar at Lincoln's Inn, of which he was a governor from 1425 to 1429. In the latter year he was made a serjeant, and is shown in the Year Books as in immense practice, until in 1442 he became Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench. His salary in that office was £120 a year, with an allowance of two robes and two tuns of Gascony wine per year. His yearly salary was after- wards increased to £160. He served as Chief Justice until v 1461. During his term occurred Cade's rebellion, and one of the charges against Fortescue and Prisot, the Chief Justices, was that of " falseness." No sooner suppressed was this rebellion, where Cade took the significant name of Mor- timer, than the Duke of York set up his claim to the throne, as descended through the Mortimers from the third son of Edward HI. The judges, the king's counsel, the Serjeants at law, were all asked for legal opinions on the title to the throne, but all declined to give an opinion. Both parties took up arms. Chief Justice Fortescue vindicated his descent from a long hne of knightly ancestors by taking the field.