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- MP for Devon, Dec 1421. Appointed chief justice of the king's bench in Dublin on 25 Jun 1426, which position he held until 1429. Sheriff of Devon 4 Nov 1446 to 9 Nov 1447 and 8 Nov 1452 to 5 Nov 1453. Sheriff of Cornwall 9 Nov 1447 to 1448.
From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (citation details below):
Henry trained as a lawyer, and was a member of Lincoln's Inn by 1420. In December 1421 he was returned as a knight of the shire for Devon. His career as a lawyer brought him promotion in Ireland rather than England, for on 25 June 1426 he was appointed chief justice of king's bench in Dublin. His salary was at first to be £40 per annum, but on 8 November following this was increased to a fee of 3s. 4d. a day. Payments fell into arrears, and perhaps for this reason on 4 April 1427 he was granted the custody of lands in Rathmore, Kildare, and elsewhere in Ireland. His tenure of office was not without controversy; twice a spokesman for the Irish parliament in making representations to Westminster, in November 1428 it was alleged that he and Sir Thomas Strange had been assaulted in the course of one of these missions. Fortescue received a new patent on 10 June 1428, but was replaced as chief justice by Stephen Bray on 18 February following.
The rest of Fortescue's career was spent in England, though he did not at once sever all links with Ireland--in March 1430 he acted as a feoffee for the fourth earl of Ormond. Consistently overshadowed by his brother John, he was one of the Devon notables sworn to keep the peace in 1434, but was only occasionally appointed to judicial commissions. Perhaps because he was from time to time said to be involved in acts of disorder—an alleged assault at Dodbrooke in 1421, a dispute over land in Nethercombe some ten years later, in the course of which he was said to have deployed a troop of Irishmen and Scots against his adversaries—he was not appointed to the Devon bench until November 1447, at the end of a year in which he served as sheriff of the county. He was sheriff of Cornwall in 1447–8, and of Devon again in 1452–3—all appointments that he probably owed to his brother. In 1454 Fortescue was a commissioner of array to defend the coasts of Devon, and in 1457 he was appointed to levy 284 archers in the county. Though last appointed a JP on 21 September 1458, Fortescue was among the feoffees to whom Joan Penells conveyed lands in Bowden and Georges Teign on 28 May 1460, and he was apparently believed to be still alive on 31 October following. But further references are wanting, and he probably died at about this time.
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
- Aft 1460
Siblings
d. Between 1432 and 1436