BOOTH, John

John Booth’s close kinship with the important local lawyer Henry Booth explains his marriage, early in his career, to Joan Foucher, widow of the Exchequer official, John Fynderne. Henry was the husband of Fynderne’s sister, Isabel, and there can be little doubt that he arranged this useful match for his nephew. Not only did Joan hold dower at Findern and elsewhere in south Derbyshire but she also had valuable hereditary expectations. Although the couple encountered difficulties in securing all to which she was entitled, Joan brought our MP a landed income sufficient to rank him with the middling county gentry: in 1436 he was assessed on the respectable income of £28 p.a., most, if not all, of which was derived from her Derbyshire estates.4 CP40/644, rot. 395d; Harpur Crewe mss, D2375M/20/3; E179/240/266.

Booth’s relationship with his influential uncle affected not only his marriage but also the timing of his first three elections to Parliament. In the first two of these assemblies – those of 1423 and 1425 – Henry, anxious to further his dispute with the sisters and heirs of Sir Philip Leche†, secured election for Derbyshire, and it seems likely that John secured election for the county’s borough to support him.5 C219/13/2, 3; SC8/339/15978. C49/68/8. Henry was not returned to the 1429 Parliament, but a petition was presented against him in the assembly, again in connexion with the Leche estate, and it is tempting to suppose that John was returned to put forward his uncle’s case.6 C216/14/1; SC8/25/1227.

John Booth was also closely allied with the Makworth family of Mackworth, three miles from Derby. Its most prominent member, John Makworth, was endowed with property in the town and elsewhere in the county, as dean of Lincoln. He retained a following drawn mostly from the southern Derbyshire gentry, among them Booth. In 1431 the latter attended an assize in Nottingham, together with four of the Makworths and other members of the dean’s retinue, to influence the outcome of a plea between Dean Makworth and Agnes Annesley. The retinue’s expenses were paid by the dean and chapter of Lincoln from the issues of their Derbyshire estates, as was the cost of three writs prosecuted against the dean’s tenants by John Booth. He also received a livery of cash from Dean Makworth to pay arrears of ten marks, probably as some form of annuity or rent.7 Lincs. AO, Dean and Chapter muns, Dij/63/i/32, m. 1d. On the other hand, his relations with the Makworths were not always harmonious. In 1435 Booth took steps to execute a statute staple bond against the dean’s nephew, Henry Makworth, after the latter had defaulted in his repayment of 100 marks borrowed from Booth.8 C241/228/ 172.

Involvement in a dispute among the townsmen of Derby led to Booth’s indictment in Derby in April 1434 before an oyer and terminer commission headed by John, duke of Bedford. A number of the town’s lesser tradesmen, led by Nicholas Meysham*, had banded together to mount a challenge to its ruling elite by founding an unlicensed fraternity at the feast of Midsummer in 1430. Booth had had his own disagreement with Meysham some years before – in 1424 he had sued him for ambushing and wounding him – and now he aligned himself with the leading townsmen who opposed the fraternity’s activities. Although most of the relevant indictments taken before the commissioners were against Meysham’s men, one of the two grand juries presented Booth for receiving members of the Stokkes family guilty of felonious theft from Robert Nundy*, one of Meysham’s main supporters. In a trial held at Derby in February 1435, however, the principals were acquitted of the theft and proceedings against Booth thus ceased.9 KB9/11/16d; KB27/654, rot. 45; 655, rot. 35d; 695, rex rots. 1, 17.

It is against the background of these divisions in the town that Booth’s election to Parliament on 25 June 1433 should be viewed. Both Sir Richard Vernon* and Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor, had brought large numbers of supporters with them to influence the outcome of the county election, and given the dispute then raging among the townsmen, the election of the burgesses may have been similarly controversial. Booth was elected with another probable supporter of Meysham’s rivals, Robert Sutton*, and, as MPs, they sought to discomfort their rivals by securing the nomination in February 1434 of two of their number, William Orme* and John Chester, as tax collectors.10 C219/14/4; S.M. Wright, Derbys. Gentry (Derbys. Rec. Soc. viii), 114; CFR, xvi. 192. By the time the royal justices arrived in the following April the leading townsmen had regained the ascendancy. The borough jury was composed almost entirely of the confederates’ opponents, headed by Booth and Thomas Stokkes* and including Sutton. Significantly, Stokkes was to be returned to the next three Parliaments for which returns survive and Booth was his companion in the first of them.11 KB9/11/17d-18; C219/14/5. Clearly the status quo had been restored, although it is difficult to say whether this represented the defeat of a campaign for greater democracy in the town’s affairs or merely the resolution of a conflict within the borough elite. Most probably it was a little of both, with two leading townsmen, Nundy and Orme, exploiting the unrest of the discontents for their own ends.

From 1439 until the end of his life, much of Booth’s energies were concentrated in defending the Fyndernes’ title to the manor of Stretton-en-le-Field (on the border between Derbyshire and Leicestershire), which John Fynderne had purchased in 1412. His wife appears to have held a life interest in the manor, and, in 1439, the Fynderne title was challenged by John Bate, dean of Tamworth College. Bate used his influence as a master in Chancery to secure a false inquisition finding that the Crown had a claim to the manor as an escheat; and he was thus able to secure custody of the estate as a Crown lessee. Further, on the strength of this false finding, Exchequer proceedings were initiated against the Booths for the recovery of the profits that they had taken during their tenure of the manor.12 E153/1867/9; E149/173/8; Harpur Crewe mss, D2375M/110/16/3. On 20 Apr. 1440 Bate entered the manor to take possession, but was soon ejected by our MP and his stepson, Nicholas Fynderne. The Booths then shrewdly conveyed an interest in the estate (for the life of Joan Booth) to a group of well-connected feoffees drawn from the Leicestershire gentry; and they in turn made Fynderne their tenant-at-will.13 KB27/794, rot. 23; E149/173/8. Fortified by these allies (most of whom were clients of John, Viscount Beaumont, and James Butler, the future earl of Wiltshire), the Booths and Fynderne compelled Bate to agree to stand to arbitration, but no award was returned and they could not prevent formal custody being awarded to Bate in February 1441.14 M. Jurkowski, ‘Fynderne Fam.’, in Texts and Their Contexts ed. Scattergood and Boffey, 211n; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 382-3; E153/1867/9. More promisingly, in the following October, after another failed attempt at arbitration, the Booths secured the taking of another inquisition post mortem which made a return supportive of the Fynderne title. Bate replied in kind: on 20 Apr. 1442 a further inquisition reversed its findings.15 E153/1866/3; CP40/722, rots. 435; C139/166/21; E149/173/8. A stalemate seems to have been reached at this point with neither side being able to collect rent from the tenants of Stretton throughout the 1440s. On 5 June 1445 both sides again agreed to bind themselves in arbitration by bonds of £400, but no award was made. By then, however, Booth was dead, for Joan was referred to as his late wife in the arbitration bonds, although he was ostensibly still alive on 30 Sept. 1444 when the Derbyshire sheriff, in returning a writ of distraint against him, reported only that he had nothing to distrain.16 C251/10/155; CP40/738, rots. 106-7; KB27/747, rot. 68; 794, rots. 23; Harpur Crewe mss, D2375M/110/16/3. In 1449 Joan Booth enfeoffed all her estates to Viscount Beaumont and others, and the dispute was still raging at her death ten years later.17 Harpur Crewe mss, D2375M/20/3; C139/105/11. The Fyndernes’ feud with Bate finally ended in 1465 when Nicholas Fynderne sold the manor to Walter Blount*, Lord Mountjoy: CPR, 1461-7, p. 444; Leics. RO, Wyggeston Hosp. deeds, 10D34/1098.