Exile in Scotland

The defeat of the Lancastrians at Towton on 29 March 1461 is now seen as a turning point in their fortunes, but this was not necessarily apparent to them at the time. Subsequently the career of Sir John Fortescue and his decrepit master, Henry VI, was to be fraught with dangers, yet they and the other members of their band may only gradually have come to accept that England was lost to them. They fled to Scotland after their military defeat and negotiated the provision of shelter and military aid from the Regent for young James III, his mother, Mary of Guelders. The other great power in the land, James Kennedy, archbishop of St Andrews, was also well disposed towards them. In return it was rumoured that they had agreed to surrender the border fortress of Berwick to the Scots and promised to cede Carlisle: this was unlikely to commend them to unaligned opinion in England but they really had no alternative.

In late June 1461 a group of Lancastrian lords recrossed the border, taking Henry VI with them. Fortescue was also in the party. The act of attainder passed in the parliament later in the year stated he was present at the skirmishes of Ryton and Brauncepeth: both were fiascos for the invaders, who beat a hasty retreat to Scotland. This seems to have ended Fortescue's involvement with martial activities for the next decade and encouraged him to turn to the metiers at which he excelled – political writing and diplomacy. It is unlikely that he had played an active part either at Towton or in these later skirmishes, although the possibility cannot be entirely discounted. One of the rewards of attempting to trace Fortescue's career and works is his constant capacity to surprise.

Fortescue might already have been given the office of Chancellor before the Lancastrians retreated to Scotland after Towton. They claimed that they retained the Great Seal after King Henry's escape from Yorkist tutelage on 17 February 1461 and they would not have recognised Edward IV's Chancellor, George Neville, bishop of Exeter. Hannes Kleineke, however, has pointed out that George Neville was unlikely to have surrendered the Seal to the Lancastrians. Fortescue might have had a separate royal seal for the King's Bench and have used this as a substitute for ‘the real thing’.