John Fortescue (Devon lawyer)

John Fortescue (died before 1436) was an English lawyer and administrator from a minor landowning family in Devon.As his descendants rose in the world, they felt the need for a more illustrious ancestor and created a suitable hero: a knight who fought in France at the famous Battle of Agincourt in 1415, was put in command of the captured city after the Siege of Meaux in 1422, and married an heiress who was mother of his sons.

[1][2] In reality he lived and died as a gentleman, his only known trip abroad was a pilgrimage to Spain, and the mother of his sons was a first wife whose last name is unknown.

Born about 1365, he was a younger son of William Fortescue, who held land at Whympston in the parish of Modbury, and his wife Elizabeth Beauchamp, who was the widow of Richard Branscombe and the daughter of John Beauchamp and his wife Margaret Whalesborough.

[4]First appearing in the records in 1390 as a gentleman appointed to a commission enquiring into wastage in manors held by the king in Devon and elsewhere, documents in 1411 and 1412 show him carrying out a property transaction and sitting on a commission for oyer and terminer.

That year saw his one known journey overseas, when he obtained a safe conduct to sail on a ship commissioned at Plymouth by the earl's elder son Sir Edward Courtenay to convey pilgrims bound for Santiago de Compostela.