Sir Henry Fortescue (

fl. ''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...

1426), was

Lord Chief Justice of Ireland The Court of King's Bench (or Court of Queen's Bench during the reign of a Queen) was one of the senior courts of common law in Ireland. It was a mirror of the Court of King's Bench in England. The Lord Chief Justice was the most senior judge ...

Early life

Fortescue was the eldest son of Sir John Fortescue, appointed in 1422 Captain of the captured Castle of Meaux, 25 miles NE of

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

. The earliest surviving record of the Fortescue family relates to its 12.c. holding of the manor of Wimpstone in the parish of Modbury, Devon. His younger brother was

Sir John Fortescue John Fortescue may refer to: * Sir John Fortescue (judge) (c. 1394–1479), English lawyer and judge, MP for Tavistock, Totnes, Plympton Erle and Wiltshire * Sir John Fortescue of Salden (1531/1533–1607), third Chancellor of the Exchequer of Eng ...

Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or ...

Studies

It is probable that he was a student of

Lincoln's Inn The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. (The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn.) Lincol ...

, and almost certain that he was elected member of parliament for

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devo ...

on 11 November 1421.

Chief Justice

His appointment as

is dated 25 June 1426, and for a short period his name occurs several times in the ''Calendar of the Irish Chancery Rolls''. From these entries, which contain all that is known of his career, it appears that a salary was assigned to him of forty pounds per annum, which was soon afterwards altered to forty pence per diem, in addition to the custody of certain manors. Fortescue held his appointment only for seventeen months, and was 'relieved' from it by the king's writ on 8 November 1427.

Embassy to King Henry VI

Almost immediately afterwards he was commissioned by the

Parliament of Ireland The Parliament of Ireland ( ga, Parlaimint na hÉireann) was the legislature of the Lordship of Ireland, and later the Kingdom of Ireland, from 1297 until 1800. It was modelled on the Parliament of England and from 1537 comprised two ch ...

to accompany

Sir James Alleyn Sir James Alleyn (died c. 1457) was an Irish judge of the fifteenth century. He held the offices of Speaker of the Irish Privy Council,''Patent Roll 22 Henry VI'' Chief Justice of the Common Pleas for Ireland and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. ...

, the

Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas The chief justice of the Common Pleas for Ireland was the presiding judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland, which was known in its early years as the Court of Common Bench, or simply as "the Bench", or "the Dublin bench". It was one of the ...

, on a mission to England, to lay before the king (

Henry VI of England Henry VI (6 December 1421 – 21 May 1471) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1422 to 1461 and again from 1470 to 1471, and disputed King of France from 1422 to 1453. The only child of Henry V, he succeeded to the English throne ...

) the grievances of his Irish subjects. Again, in 1428, he was sent with Sir Thomas Strange by the lords and commons assembled in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 ...

, with the concurrence of Sir John Sutton, the

Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (), or more formally Lieutenant General and General Governor of Ireland, was the title of the chief governor of Ireland from the Williamite Wars of 1690 until the Partition of Ireland in 1922. This spanned the King ...

, with a number of articles of complaint to be laid again before the king. One of the grievances which he was instructed to represent related to the insults and assaults made upon himself and Sir James Alleyn during their former mission, from which it may be concluded that their first visit to the court had not met with much success. The other griefs for which the parliament prayed redress related to the frequent changes of governors and justices, the debts left behind them by each successive lord-lieutenant, the exclusion of Irish law students from the English

Inns of Court The Inns of Court in London are the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. There are four Inns of Court – Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, Inner Temple and Middle Temple. All barristers must belong to one of them. They have ...

, and the treatment of Irishmen travelling in England. There is no further mention of Fortescue in the 'Patent Rolls,’ nor is anything known as to his afterlife, beyond the record of an action brought against him to recover certain lands in Nethercombe,

Devonshire Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, ...

Other appointments

He was Sheriff of Devon in 1446 and 1452 and

Sheriff of Cornwall Sheriffs and high sheriffs of Cornwall: a chronological list: The right to choose high sheriffs each year is vested in the Duchy of Cornwall. The Privy Council, chaired by the sovereign, chooses the sheriffs of all other English counties, othe ...

in 1447.

Marriage and progeny

He was twice married, each time to an heiress: *Firstly to Joan Boyun (''alias'' Bozun), daughter and heiress of Edmund Boyun of the manor of Wood, in the parish of Woodleigh, South Devon; *Secondly to the daughter and heiress of Nicholas de Fallopit of the manor of Fallopit in the parish of

East Allington East Allington is a village and civil parish in the South Hams district of Devon, England, south of Halwell and just off the A381 road. It lies about from Kingsbridge and about from Totnes. The coast at Slapton Sands is about to the south ...

, South Devon. He left sons by each wife, who each inherited their respective mother's properties, and founded two branches of the Devonshire family of Fortescue. The Fallopit branch soon ended in an heiress, Elizabeth Fortescue, who took the manor by marriage to her cousin Lewis Fortescue (d.1545), a younger son of the Fortescues of Spridleston, in Brixton, Devon, who was a

Baron of the Exchequer The Barons of the Exchequer, or ''barones scaccarii'', were the judges of the English court known as the Exchequer of Pleas. The Barons consisted of a Chief Baron of the Exchequer and several puisne (''inferior'') barons. When Robert Shute was ...

under King Henry VIII. Their descendant, Anne Hals, married the Rev John Tindal, father of Dr

Matthew Tindal Matthew Tindal (1657 – 16 August 1733) was an eminent English deist author. His works, highly influential at the dawn of the Enlightenment, caused great controversy and challenged the Christian consensus of his time. Life Tindal was baptised ...

and great great grandfather of Sir Nicholas Conyngham Tindal,

Chief Justice of the Common Pleas The chief justice of the Common Pleas was the head of the Court of Common Pleas, also known as the Common Bench or Common Place, which was the second-highest common law court in the English legal system until 1875, when it, along with the othe ...

.'Tindal of Chelmsford'
/ref>

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fortescue, Henry Year of birth missing 15th-century deaths English MPs December 1421 15th-century Irish judges English knights Henry Members of Lincoln's Inn High Sheriffs of Devon High Sheriffs of Cornwall Lords chief justice of Ireland Members of the Parliament of England (pre-1707) for Devon