John Fortescue (Captain of Meaux)

John Fortescue (died after 1432), of Shepham in the parish of Modbury in Devon, was an English landowner and administrator. He may have been appointed in 1422 by King Henry V as Captain of the captured Castle of Meaux, 25 miles (40 km) north-east of Paris, following the Siege of Meaux during the Hundred Years' War.

He was born in the 1370s, the second son of William Fortescue (died after 1406), of Whympston in the parish of Modbury in Devon (the earliest recorded English seat of the Fortescue family) by his wife Elizabeth Beauchamp, widow of Richard Branscombe, a daughter of Sir John Beauchamp of Ryme in Dorset by his wife Margaret Whalesborough, and a co-heiress of her brother Thomas Beauchamp of Ryme.

Ives (2005) stated that "he was not a soldier, as historians of the family have claimed, but a local administrator and man of affairs, above all in the service of the Courtenay family", the Earls of Devon. However, older sources state that he was at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) and that he was appointed after the Siege of Meaux in 1422 as captain of the captured Castle of Meaux, returning to England before 1431 and living at Shepham in South Devon.

According to Ives (2005), Fortescue's first wife was a certain Clarice, whose family name is lost. Ives states that she was the mother of his three children:

Earlier historians, however, make no mention of Clarice and state that his wife and the mother of his three children was a daughter and heir of William Norries,, named Elinor or Eleanor.

On the south wall of the south aisle chapel ("Fortescue Chapel") of the parish church of Weare Giffard is affixed the Fortescue mural monument, erected in 1638 by Hugh Fortescue (1592-1661). It is dedicated to three generations of the Fortescue family and mentions the family origins at Whympston and Sir John Fortescue, Captain of Meaux.

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