As a member of King Henry VI's council, even though he would attend only occasionally, Sir John Fortescue was expected to offer advice. During his early years as Chief Justice, it has been suggested above, his low status in relation to the King's inner circle meant that his words were likely to carry little weight and were mostly confined to the technicalities of the law. As time went on the situation changed: the disorderly 1450s, the Crown's chronic shortage of money and the duke of York's ever more determined efforts to wrest power away from Queen Margaret and her followers (several of whom were killed in the process) made Fortescue's position progressively more influential. Apart from the little tract on the Commodities of England, which addressed the issue of England's potential wealth just after the loss of Normandy (c.1452), none of his political writings seem to have pre-dated the exile of the Lancastrians in 1461. The political element in the De Natura Legis Naturae anticipated a number of ideas that were to be found in the De Laudibus Legum Anglie (c.1470). The Articles sent by Edward, prince of Wales, to the earl of Warwick concerning the government of England (1470/1) reads like a blueprint for the Governance of England, which also contains much material derived from the De Laudibus. This chapter seeks to trace the development of Fortescue's ideas on governance from the short and practical response of the Commodities to the thoughtful development of how political and regal rule should determine the law and the administration of England.

Henry VI

The Commodities of England

This little paper was almost certainly written by Sir John Fortescue to lay before King Henry's council between mid-1450 and the summer of 1453, when England had lost Normandy but still expected to retain Guyenne and Gascony. Its informal character, poor presentation, brevity and concentration on the specific issues of England's wealth, security and the importance of the port of Sluys make it look more a collection of notes written in the context of a discussion about raising revenue than a treatise for wider consumption. Many of the government's recent woes had been caused by lack of money, and characteristically Fortescue resorted to his pen to try to remedy the situation. If he was the author it is his earliest work by nearly a decade.