the township, including the village (1900), 5216; (1905), 5300; (1910), 5740. The village lies mostly at the foot of a steep hill, is at the junction of the main line and the Glens Falls branch of the Delaware & Hudson railway, and is also served by electric line to Albany and Glens Falls; the barge canal connecting Lake Champlain and the Hudson river enters the Hudson here. The river furnishes good water-power, which is used in the manufacture of paper and wood pulp, the leading industry. Shirts and pottery (flower pots, jars and drain tile) are manufactured also. The village is the seat of the Fort Edward Collegiate Institute, a non-sectarian school for girls, which was founded in 1854 and until 1893 was coeducational. The village owns and operates the waterworks. Indian war parties on their way to Canada were accustomed to make a portage from this place, the head of navigation for small boats on the Hudson, to Lake George or Lake Champlain, and hence it was known as the Great Carrying Place. Governor (afterwards Sir) Francis Nicholson in 1709, in his expedition against Canada, built here a stockade which was named Fort Nicholson. Some years afterwards John Henry Lydius (1693–1791) established a settlement and protected it by a new fort, named Fort Lydius, but this was destroyed by the French and Indians in 1745. In 1755, a third fort was built by General Phineas Lyman (1716–1774), as preliminary to the expedition against Crown Point under General William Johnson, and was named Fort Lyman; in 1756 Johnson renamed it Fort Edward in honour of Edward, Duke of York. In the War for Independence Fort Edward was the headquarters of General Philip Schuyler while he and his troops were blocking the march of General Burgoyne’s army from Fort Ticonderoga. When a part of Burgoyne’s forces was distant only 3 or 4 m. from Fort Edward, on Fort Edward Hill, on the 27th of July 1777, the leader of an Indian band whose assistance the British had sought is supposed to have murdered Jane McCrea (c. 1757–1777), a young girl who had been visiting friends in Fort Edward, and who was to be escorted on that day to the British camp and there to be married to David Jones, a loyalist serving as a lieutenant in Burgoyne’s army; it is possible that she was shot accidentally by Americans pursuing her Indian escorts, but her death did much to rouse local sentiment against Burgoyne and his Indian allies, and caused many volunteers to join the American army resisting Burgoyne’s invasion. A monument has been erected by the Jane McCrea Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution near the spot where she was killed, and she is buried in Union Cemetery in Fort Edward. Fort Edward township was erected in 1818 from a part of the township of Argyle. Fort Edward village was incorporated in 1852.
See R. O. Bascom, The Fort Edward Book (Fort Edward, 1903).
FORTESCUE, SIR JOHN (c. 1394–c. 1476), English lawyer,
the second son of Sir John Fortescue, of an ancient family in
Devonshire, was born at Norris, near South Brent, in Somersetshire.
He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford. During the
reign of Henry VI. he was three times appointed one of the
governors of Lincoln’s Inn. In 1441 he was made a king’s
sergeant at law, and in the following year chief justice of the
king’s bench. As a judge Fortescue is highly recommended for
his wisdom, gravity and uprightness; and he seems to have
enjoyed great favour with the king, who is said to have given
him some substantial proofs of esteem and regard. He held his
office during the remainder of the reign of Henry VI., to whom
he steadily adhered; and having faithfully served that unfortunate
monarch in all his troubles, he was attainted of treason
in the first parliament of Edward IV. When Henry subsequently
fled into Scotland, he is supposed to have appointed Fortescue,
who appears to have accompanied him in his flight, chancellor
of England. In 1463 Fortescue accompanied Queen Margaret
and her court in their exile on the Continent, and returned with
them afterwards to England. During their wanderings abroad
the chancellor wrote for the instruction of the young prince
Edward his celebrated work De laudibus legum Angliae. On
the defeat of the Lancastrian party he made his submission
to Edward IV., from whom he received a general pardon dated
Westminster, October 13, 1471. He died at an advanced age,
but the exact date of his death has not been ascertained.
Fortescue’s masterly vindication of the laws of England, though received with great favour by the learned of the profession to whom it was communicated, did not appear in print until the reign of Henry VIII., when it was published, but without a date. It was subsequently many times reprinted. Another valuable and learned work by Fortescue, written in English, was published in 1714, under the title of The Difference between an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy. In the Cotton library there is a manuscript of this work, in the title of which it is said to have been addressed to Henry VI.; but many passages show plainly that it was written in favour of Edward IV. A revised edition of this work, with a very valuable historical and biographical introduction, was published in 1885 by Charles Plummer, under the title The Governance of England. All of Fortescue’s minor writings appear in The Works of Sir John Fortescue, now first Collected and Arranged, published in 1869 for private circulation, by his descendant, Lord Clermont.
Authorities.—Plummer’s Introduction to The Governance of England; Life in Lord Clermont’s edition; Gairdner’s Paston Letters; Foss’s Lives of the Judges.
FORTESCUE, SIR JOHN (c. 1531–1607), English statesman,
was the eldest son of Sir Adrian Fortescue (executed in 1539),
and of his second wife, Anne, daughter of Sir William Reade or
Rede of Borstall in Buckinghamshire. The exact date of his
birth is unrecorded.[1] He was restored in blood and to his
estate at Shirburn in Oxfordshire in 1551. Through his father’s
mother, Alice, daughter of Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, he was a second
cousin once removed from Queen Elizabeth. He acquired early
a considerable reputation as a scholar and was chosen to direct
the Princess Elizabeth’s classical studies in Mary’s reign. On
the accession of Elizabeth he was appointed keeper of the great
wardrobe. He was returned in 1572 to parliament for Wallingford,
in 1586 for Buckingham borough, in 1588 and 1597 for
Buckingham county, and in 1601 for Middlesex. In 1589 he
was appointed chancellor of the exchequer and a member of
the privy council. In 1592 he was knighted, and in November
1601, in addition to his two great offices, he received that of
chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. By means of his lucrative
employments he amassed great wealth, with which he bought
large estates in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and kept up
much state and a large household. He took a prominent part
in public business, was a member of the court of the star chamber
and an ecclesiastical commissioner, sat on various important
commissions, and as chancellor of the exchequer explained the
queen’s financial needs and proposed subsidies in parliament.
On the death of Elizabeth he suggested that certain restrictions
should be imposed on James’s powers, in order probably to limit
the appointment of Scotchmen to office,[2] but his advice was not
followed. He was deprived by James of the chancellorship of
the exchequer, but evidently did not forfeit his favour, as he
retained his two other offices and entertained James several
times at Henden and Salden. In 1604 Sir John, who stood for
Buckinghamshire, was defeated by Sir Francis Goodwin, whose
election, however, was declared void by the lord chancellor on the
ground of a sentence of outlawry under which he lay, and
Fortescue was by a second election returned in his place. This
incident gave rise to a violent controversy, regarding the chancellor’s
jurisdiction in deciding disputed elections to parliament,
which was repudiated by the Commons but maintained by the
king. The matter after much debate was ended by a compromise,
which, while leaving the principle unsettled, set aside the elections
of both candidates and provided for the issue of a new writ.
Fortescue was then in February 1606 returned for Middlesex,
which he represented till his death on the 23rd of December 1607.
He was buried in Mursley church in Buckinghamshire, where a
monument was erected to his memory. His long public career
was highly honourable, and he served his sovereign and country
with unswerving fidelity and honesty. His learned attainments
too were considerable—Camden styles him “vir integer, Graece,
- ↑ The inscription on his tomb states that he was 76 at his death on the 23rd of December 1607 (Lord Clermont’s Hist. of the Family of Fortescue, 377), but according to a statement ascribed to himself, he was born the same year as Queen Elizabeth and therefore in 1533 (Bucks. Architect. and Archaeolog. Soc. Records of Bucks, i. p. 89).
- ↑ David Lloyd’s State Worthies (1670), 556.
