Sir John Fortescue

Sir John Fortescue (born c. 1385, Norris, Somerset, Eng.—died c. 1479, Ebrington, Gloucestershire) was a 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.