Sir John Fortescue (d. after 1476), was descended from an old Devonshire family, and in 1442 was made Chief Justice of the King’s Bench. He was a strong partisan of the Lancastrian cause, and in the first Parliament of Edward IV. was attainted of high treason. He fled to Scotland, and afterwards to France, where he became the tutor of the young Prince Edward, for whose instruction he wrote his famous work, “De Laudibus Legum Angliæ.” He was present at the battle of Tewkesbury, and in 1473 obtained a reversal of his attainder by retracting what he had written against Edward IV.’s title to the crown. The date of his death is uncertain. His book is of much interest, from its picture of a constitutional ideal that had almost been realised in the preceding generation.
All good men, and lovers of the English constitution, speak of him with honour, and that he still lives in the opinions of all true Englishmen, in as high esteem and reputation, as any judge that ever sat in Westminster Hall. He was a man acquainted with all sorts of learning, besides his knowledge in the law, in which he was exceeded by none; as will appear by the many judgments he gave, when on the bench, in the year-book of Henry VI. His character, in history, is that of pious, loyal, and learned; and he had the honour to be called the chief counsellor of the King. He was a great courtier, and yet a great lover of his country.
One of the first important prose-writers in the language.
The works of his three predecessors, Glanville, Bracton, and Hengham, were no doubt more useful to the legal student and forensic practitioner; but that of Fortescue offered greater attractions to general readers by its popular form and its historical details; and the consequence is that while the former have become almost obsolete, the latter is still read with interest by the curious and philosophical enquirer.
The great value of the book consists in the emphatic testimony which it bears to the free principles of our Constitution as then fully recognised; but it has also considerable literary merit. It is forcibly and clearly written, without prolixity or repetition. The English is very easy. Indeed, as we read it in the printed editions, it seems so much more like common English than any other book of the century is, that it makes us suspect that the book has been to some extent modernised by its printers and publishers.
The spirit is the spirit of Alfred of old, and he writes as a man who was looking forward more than two centuries when English liberties were to be fully established at the revolution of 1688, under William.
In his works Fortescue proves himself an Englishman whose expressions of patriotism at times surpass the bounds of absurdity, a warm friend of his nation, a man clear in thought and humane in feeling, a zealous advocate of freedom as well as of political order, a learned lawyer and devoted to his profession. And although of a strictly ecclesiastical turn of mind—in other words, with a leaning towards ultramontanism—he was a man of upright and sincere piety, as is evident from his beautiful “Dialogue between Understanding and Faith,” which discusses, from the point of view of a faithful and devout Christian, the difficult problem of the sovereignty of a merciful and just Providence amid the perplexed and often most sorrowful form assumed by our life here on earth…. While he is clear and convincing in the development of his thoughts—which are not, indeed, presented altogether methodically, yet in synoptical order—and happy in the selection of his explanatory illustrations and detail, he is further distinguished by the choice of his expressions, by the formation and combination of his sentences in their simple appropriateness and definiteness. Besides this, he manages to produce increased effect, within modest limits, by gradation, repetition, and antithesis; at times also he brings his periods to a full-sounding close by making use of a greater flow of language. The Renaissance did not quite reach him, and yet his earnest inquiry into the actualities of his own domain, gives him an attitude in some measure connected with the Renaissance.
As a writer of English prose, Fortescue’s chief merit lies in the fact that he was the first to adapt it to the discussion of political and constitutional problems. His phraseology is, of course, somewhat antiquated: he preserves the en termination of the infinitive and of the plural of verbs, together with a few other archaisms which have disappeared by the reign of Henry VIII. His style, moreover, being necessarily experimental, lacks elegance and harmony; but it is never undignified, it always exhibits the vigour, lucidity, and method of the practised lawyer, and occasionally kindles with the glow of patriotism or professional pride.
He deserves the praise of being our earliest political historian. Fortescue is one of our greatest Latin authorities on constitutional law, and as a writer on definitely national themes in a purely colloquial English he is an innovator among those who wrote, if not in Latin or French, in a style obviously translated from one of those tongue. His sentences are short, but abrupt and inelegant; he performs his task, and we acknowledge his courage, but we cannot pretend to enjoy the manner of delivery.
Fortescue’s fame has rested almost entirely on the dialogue “De Laudibus.” Coke, speaking with the exaggeration which he used in referring to Fortescue’s contemporary, Littleton, described it as worthy, “si vel gravitatem vel excellentiam spectemus,” of being written in letters of gold (Pref. to 8th Rep.), and Sir W. Jones following him, called it “aureolum hunc dialogum.”… The editor of his less known treatise, “On the Governance of England,” however, has good reason for his opinion that the historical interest of the latter is far higher. It is less loaded with barren speculations, and it shows a real insight into the failure of the Lancastrian experiment of government; while it is invaluable as the earliest of English constitutional treatises.
