Sir John Fortescue
born c.
1385, Norris, Somerset, Eng.
died c. 1479, Ebrington, Gloucestershire
jurist,
notable for a legal treatise, De laudibus legum
Angliae (c. 1470; “In Praise of the Laws of
England”), written for the instruction of
Edward, prince of Wales, son of the deposed king
Henry VI of England. He also stated a moral
principle that remains basic to the
Anglo-American jury system: It is better that
the guilty escape than that the innocent be
punished.
Fortescue became chief justice of the King’s
Bench in 1442 and was knighted the following
year. After the defeat of Henry VI’s Lancastrian
army at Towton, Yorkshire (March 29, 1461), he
fled with Henry to Scotland, where Fortescue
probably was appointed lord chancellor of the
exiled government. From 1463 to 1471 he lived in
France at the court of Henry’s queen, Margaret
of Anjou, where he helped to educate Prince
Edward to rule England in the event of a
Lancastrian restoration. Returning to England,
he was captured at Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire,
during the final defeat of the Lancastrians (May
4, 1471), submitted to the Yorkist king Edward
IV, and was allowed to retire to his home.
Unusual
for its time, De laudibus depreciates the
Roman-derived civil law and eulogizes the
English constitution, statutes, and system of
legal education, while offering suggestions for
reform. It was probably the first book about law
written in a style so simple and lucid as to be
comprehensible to the layman.
