sand ‘poor jacks,’ six thousand dried whiting, and six hundredweight of tobacco, are among the items of the provisions supplied, while such entries as ‘twenty pots with sweetmeats, and a good box of all sorts of especially good dry preserves,’ one butt of sack, and ‘two cases of bottles filled with rare and good strong waters,’ show that Fortescue did not forget to provide for the table of the officers' mess. The garrison consisted of eleven officers, Sir Charles Luckner being second in command, and two of Fortescue's brothers serving under him, a chaplain, a surgeon, two laundresses, and forty-three non-commissioned officers and men. Of these one was killed during the siege, three were wounded, and two deserted. The fort was occupied in November or December 1644, and in January 1645–6 a force was sent from Plymouth who erected a battery of three guns in a commanding position on the mainland, exactly opposite and slightly above the small promontory on which the fort is situated. The siege lasted until May 1646, when Fortescue capitulated to Colonel Ralph Weldon, then in command of Plymouth. He obtained very favourable terms for the garrison, the articles of surrender stipulating that the whole force should be allowed to march out with all the honours of war and proceed in safety to their own homes; Fortescue himself and the other officers obtaining permission to remain at home unmolested for three months, at the end of which time they were free either to make their peace with the parliament or to go abroad from any port they should select (Articles agreed one betweene Sir Edmond Fortescue, Governor off Fort Charles and Major Pearce, &c. 7 May 1646). Fortescue carried away with him the key of Fort Charles, which still remains in the possession of his descendant. Unwilling or unable to come to terms with the parliament, Fortescue made his way to Delft, where he lived during the brief remainder of his life.
In the ‘Propositions of the Lords and Commons for a peace sent to His Majesty at Newcastle’ in July 1646, he is included in a list of persons who are to be removed from ‘his majesty's councils and to be restrained from coming within the verge of the court, bearing any public office or having any employment concerning the state’ (Rushworth, Collections, pt. iv. vol. i. p. 309). Fortescue died in January or February 1647, at the early age of thirty-seven, and was buried in the ‘New Church’ of Delft. He married Jane Southcott of Mohun's Ottery, and had a son Edmund, created a baronet in 1664, and three daughters. There is a portrait of Fortescue at Fallapit House, and a Dutch engraving, a facsimile of which is given by Lord Clermont.
[Lord Clermont's Hist. of the Family of Fortescue; Kingsbridge and Salcombe historically and topographically described.]
FORTESCUE, Sir FAITHFUL (1581?–1666), royalist commander, was second son of William Fortescue of Buckland Filleigh, Devon, and the descendant in the fifth generation of Sir John Fortescue, lord chief justice [q. v.]
In 1598 Fortescue's maternal uncle, Sir Arthur (afterwards Lord) Chichester [q. v.], went to Ireland in command of a regiment of infantry, and took with him Faithful Fortescue. In a brief memoir of his uncle, compiled after his death, printed by Lord Clermont, Fortescue says: ‘With the first Lord Chichester I had, from coming young from school, my education, and by him the foundation of my advancement and fortune I acquired in Ireland.’ In 1604 Sir Arthur Chichester was appointed lord deputy, an office which he held until 1616. During these memorable years the settlement of Ulster was carried through, and Fortescue acquired his share both of offices and of lands in the north of Ireland. In 1606 he received a patent for life of the post of constable of Carrickfergus, otherwise known as Knockfergus Castle, one of the most important fortified places in the north of Ireland (M'Skimmin, History of Carrickfergus, p. 56).
A few years later he obtained a grant from the crown erecting into the manor of Fortescue an extensive range of territory in Antrim, which had formerly belonged to an Irish chieftain named Rory Oige MacQuillane. A part of this land he sold in 1624; the remainder, together with the property of Dromiskin in Louth, still remains in possession of his descendants. In the parliament of 1613 every effort was made to swamp the native Irish vote by means of creating a number of borough and county franchises among the new English and Scotch settlements in Ulster. Fortescue was elected to this parliament as member for Charlemont in the county of Armagh; in the subsequent parliaments of 1634 and 1639 he sat as member for the county of Armagh, while his eldest son succeeded him as representative of Charlemont.
In 1624 he obtained the command of a company in the force raised in England to serve in the Netherlands under Count Mansfeld, but through the interest of Lord Chichester he was permitted to exchange into a regiment then being enlisted in Cumberland and other northern counties of England
