FORTESCUE, John

More can be added to the earlier biography, The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 109-11. Nothing is known of Fortescue’s activity in Parliament on any of the nine occasions on which he sat in the Commons. By contrast, rather more has been discovered of the value that the Crown placed on his services after he had taken the coif. In November 1440 he was rewarded for his labours on the King’s behalf in the Parliament of 1439-40 (to which he is not known to have been formally summoned), and in July 1458 he was granted £100 for his expenses in attending Parliament and the King’s council, and in carrying out the King’s business in Devon and elsewhere. E403/740, m. 6; 815, m. 1; 817, m. 8.

Fortescue’s appointment as chief justice naturally limited his involvement in affairs in his native Devon, and the fees he was permitted to receive. Thus, in 1442 he was forced to surrender the annual pension he had been drawing from the city of Exeter since 1433. Devon RO, Exeter city recs., receivers’ accts. 12-21 Hen. VI. Nevertheless, Fortescue did not forget his old ties with the citizens, and in 1447 when he was asked to make a ruling in the acrimonious dispute between the city and Bishop Lacy, Mayor John Shillingford* reported home that he had found him ‘a gode man and well willed yn oure right, and like to have the grete rule of the mater’. Yet, Fortescue also showed a lighter side to his character, facetiously arguing the bishop’s case with Shillingford, but, as the mayor noted, ‘all hit was to tempte me wt laghynge chere’. Letters and Pprs. Shillingford (Cam. Soc. n.s. ii), 9, 10. The citizens for their part also sought to maintain good relations with the chief justice, and throughout the remainder of Henry VI’s reign frequently sent him gifts of wine and pears. Exeter receivers’ accts. 30-38 Hen. VI. Similarly, Fortescue’s long and close connexion with the Lords Hungerford, led to a life-grant of lands in their manor of Brandon, Somerset, and an annuity of 53s. 4d. from the same estate. SC6/971/10, 12.

In spite of the moralizing tone of many of his writings, Fortescue was no more of a philanthropist than his contemporaries when an opportunity for apparently easy profit presented itself. Thus it was in the course of his judicial duties that the chief justice first became aware of the dispute over the Waleys estates in Sussex, and involved himself in a course of events not unsuited to the plot of a comic opera. The title to the Waleys’ holdings, principally the manors of Glynde, Hawkesden, Bainden and Patching, had first become disputed in the early years of Henry VI’s reign, when their heir, John Waleys, had died a minor and had left as his next male heir his cousin William Waleys, like him under age, but in addition of unsound mind. William’s wardship and custody of the principal manor of Glynde had been secured by Robert, Lord Poynings, but William’s title had almost immediately been challenged by John Waleys’s four sisters and their husbands. Attempts at a settlement by arbitration had failed, and in 1446, after more than two decades of squabbling, the chancellor, Archbishop Stafford found in favour of William Waleys and on 4 July the King granted his wardship and custody of the disputed manors to Fortescue. Cat. Glynde Place Archs. ed. Dell, pp. xii-xv, nos. 9-13, [157]; CPR, 1441-6, p. 454. For four years Fortescue’s tenure of the estates seems to have been undisputed, but in the wake of Cade’s rebellion the Waleys coheirs felt emboldened to take possession of them by force, prompting Fortescue on 14 June 1450 to place them formally in the hands of his three fellow judges of the King’s bench, while bringing and contesting a series of actions at common law in the name of his ward. KB27/757, rot. 33d; CP40/768, rot. 35. Tempers flared, and one of Fortescue’s opponents, Nicholas Morley*, who had sat in the Commons alongside him in 1437, was accused of having slandered the chief justice by what he had declared ‘upon the Blakehethe to the ryght grete perell of suche as wer better thanne they both and also whate he said agenst him at Baldoke in Hertfordchire in the feire tyme ther the last somyre to the gret perell and lykely oundoynge of the same Sir John and god hadde not defended hym’. The circumstances of Morley’s outburst at Blackheath are uncertain, but it is possible that his comments reflect an animosity to the legal profession familiar from the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and also ascribed by William Shakespeare to Cade’s rebels. E. Suss. RO, Glynde mss, 23. The dispute over the Waleys estates continued for a further five years, but was eventually settled by arbitration in 1455. Under the terms of the fresh agreement William Waleys and his heirs male were to retain the principal manor of Glynde, while the other three disputed manors would be shared by the four sisters and their heirs. CP40/759, rot. 104; 780, cart. rot. 1; Cat. Glynde Place Archs. nos. 14, 16, 17; C1/28/431; CPR, 1446-52, p. 498; CP25(1)/241/91/4. Fortescue lost little time in ensuring that his family’s control over Glynde would be permanent by marrying his daughter Margaret to John Waleys of Devon, next heir to William Waleys, who died within the following three years. Fortescue’s victory seemed complete, but it was not to last. Following the Yorkist triumph at Northampton in July 1460 John Waleys (who was a year later explicitly excluded from Edward IV’s pardon as a traitor) surrendered Glynde to Nicholas Morley, and Fortescue, by then in exile with Queen Margaret, was in no position to interfere further. Cat. Glynde Place Archs. ped. and nos. 28, 29, 31; CP25(1)/241/91/17, 92/2; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 292, 519; PROME, xiii. 56-57.

During the period of his exile in the 1460s, Fortescue worked tirelessly to bring about a restoration of the house of Lancaster. In both 1464 and 1465 he visited Paris, on the second occasion procuring Louis XI’s permission to go to England on a mission for which the impoverished Queen Margaret provided him with the sum of 275 livres tournois (approximately £30) for his expenses. M.L. Kekewich, ‘Lancastrian Court in Exile’, The Lancastrian Court ed. Stratford, 102, 107-8. The details of Fortescue’s ‘mission’ are obscure, but it is interesting to speculate whether at this time he made contact with (Sir) Thomas Cook II*, who three years later was to be convicted of plotting with other Lancastrian agents to assist Queen Margaret’s court in exile. Certainly, there were links between Fortescue and Cook: in 1449 the chief justice had been a feoffee of Cook’s father-in-law, Philip Malpas*, and among Cook’s possessions were a number of Fortescue’s works. John Vale’s Bk. ed. Kekewich et al., 63. When the restoration eventually came about in 1470, Fortescue appears to have remained in France with the queen and prince of Wales until the early months of 1471. In the event, he preceded Margaret to Exeter, where the citizens treated him to two gallons of wine while he awaited his mistress’s arrival. Exeter receiver’s acct. 1470-1. Nevertheless, Fortescue’s transition into Edward IV’s service after the battle of Tewkesbury seems to have been even faster than has at times been allowed: in Easter term 1471 the tellers of the Exchequer recorded a payment of 40s. to him, granted on the King’s express orders for his expenses in attending upon the treasurer of England ‘for divers matters concerning the King’s profit’. E405/53, rot. 5.

Besides Margaret Waleys Fortescue had another daughter, Elizabeth, who under the terms of an agreement sealed in London on 1 Dec. 1443 had been betrothed to Edmund, son of Thomas Whalesborough, a marriage for which the chief justice was prepared to pay the substantial sum of 250 marks. As Fortescue’s only son, Martin, who had married Elizabeth, the daughter of Richard Densyll, predeceased him, his heir male was his grandson, Bartholomew. E13/146, rot. 78; C1/31/465; CFR, xxi. 5, 6.