Fortescue, SIR JOHN

Fortescue, SIR JOHN, judge and writer on English law, was born in Somersetshire towards the close of the 14th century, and educated at Exeter College, Oxford. Called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, he was in 1441 made serjeant-at-law, and in the following year Lord Chief-justice of the Court of King's Bench. In the struggle between the Houses of York and Lancaster he steadily adhered to the latter, and was attainted by the parliament under Edward IV. He accompanied Margaret of Anjou and her young son, Prince Edward, on their flight into Scotland, and is there supposed to have been appointed Lord Chancellor by Henry VI. In 1463 he embarked with the queen and her son for Holland. During his exile he wrote his celebrated work, De Laudibus Legum Anglicæ, for the instruction of Prince Edward, who was his pupil. But on the final defeat of the Lancastrian party at the battle of Tewkesbury, 1471, where he is said to have been taken prisoner, Fortescue submitted to Edward IV. He died in about the ninetieth year of his age. The De Laudibus Legum was not printed until the reign of Henry VIII.; another valuable work by Fortescue is The Governance of England; otherwise called the Difference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy, written in English (1714; new ed. by Plummer: Clarendon Press, 1886). His collected works were printed for private circulation by Lord Clermont in 1869.