BOOTH, Robert

The Booths were among the most prolific of English gentry families in the fifteenth century, and it is thus impossible to be entirely certain of the identity of the man who represented Westbury in 1459, and had perhaps also sat for Cricklade in 1455 (when the Christian name of the MP is lost from the official return), as there were several namesakes active in the period. It is, however, probable that the MP was one of the three close kinsmen (two nephews and a great-nephew of the half blood) of Laurence Booth, chancellor to Queen Margaret of Anjou, from 1457 bishop of Durham, to bear that name. The most likely candidate of the three was Robert, the son of Roger Booth of Sawley and Mollington.6 The other two were respectively sons of Bp. Booth’s nephew Thomas Booth of Barton and of his brother Sir Robert Booth of Dunham Massey: C46/39, m. 19; VCH Lancs. iv. 365. Wedgwood conflated the MP with his kinsman, Dr. Robert Booth (d.1488), the dean of York, who was a son of Richard Booth of Bergham, Suff.: HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 93; William Worsley ed. Kleineke and Hovland, 3, 134. Laurence Booth, his elder half-brother William Booth, successively bishop of Coventry and Lichfield and archbishop of York, and their nephew John Booth, bishop of Exeter, provided ecclesiastical patronage for a host of their younger relatives over a period of decades, but unlike many of his kinsmen, Robert Booth did not avail himself directly of their influence, choosing instead to pursue a career in the common law.7 A.C. Reeves, ‘Bp. John Booth’, in Traditions and Transformations ed. Biggs, Michalove and Reeves, 125-7.

There is no suggestion that Booth rose high in his profession, but it may have been through his legal practice that he made the acquaintance of a fellow lawyer from Bedfordshire, John Enderby, whose wealthy widow, Maud, he married not long after Enderby’s death in 1457. Her dower lands were extensive, assessed at the time of her death at more than £80 p.a., and gave Booth entry into Bedfordshire society as one of the wealthier landowners in the county. Even so, it was after all his uncle Laurence’s patronage that brought him Membership of the Commons and further advancement. Even before the rout of Richard, duke of York, and his adherents at Ludford Bridge on 13 Oct. 1459, the court party around Queen Margaret had summoned a Parliament intended to sanction the legal destruction of their opponents. In order to secure a pliant House of Commons, the court evidently brought its influence to bear in a number of urban constituencies. Several of these were found, unsurprisingly, in Wiltshire, where the queen held extensive lands, and it is probable that it was Laurence Booth, then the queen’s chancellor, who advanced his nephew’s candidature for one of the Westbury seats. It seems unlikely that Booth ever visited his constituency, and there may even be a suggestion of foul play in the insertion of his name into the schedule accompanying the sheriff’s indenture over an erasure.

It is not known what part, if any, Booth played in the proceedings of the Parliament, which assembled at Coventry on 20 Nov., but two weeks earlier he had been entrusted with the escheatorship of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Closely associated with the queen’s partisan regime, Booth faced political eclipse when the tables turned in the summer of 1460, but following Edward IV’s accession, he – like his uncle Laurence and several of their other relatives – rapidly came to terms with the new regime. In May 1461 he was added to the Bedfordshire county bench as a member of the quorum, and from that autumn he periodically served on local ad hoc commissions. It was in his capacity as a j.p. that in January 1463 he was making his way to Bedford for the sessions, when he was accosted by a gathering of local rioters led by one John Hamwell, a gentleman from Cople, who broke down the doors of the house in which Booth was staying at Newnham, and physically threatened him. Although Booth (as he claimed) courageously charged the rioters to keep the peace, he was eventually forced by their continued threats to abandon his original purpose.8 KB27/808, rex rot. 8.

Several of Booth’s kinsmen entered the King’s immediate service: most importantly, his first cousin John Booth became Edward IV’s secretary and in 1465 was rewarded by elevation to the bishopric of Exeter. By the end of the 1460s the King’s trust in Robert had grown sufficiently to see him pricked sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in the crisis year of 1469, not long after the monarch had regained his freedom from captivity in the hands of his cousin, the earl of Warwick. Nevertheless, when Warwick seized power in Henry VI’s name in October 1470, Booth was confirmed in post for what was left of his term, and this may explain why he, like other members of his family, sued out a general pardon in November 1471 after Edward IV’s restoration.9 C67/48, m. 34.

The King’s trust in the Booths nevertheless remained undiminished: in July 1473 Laurence Booth was entrusted with the great seal, and on George Neville’s death three years later he was elevated to the see of York. Even earlier, at some point before Michaelmas 1472, Robert had been appointed marshal of the marshalsea of the Household. Earlier that year, he had been present at the parliamentary elections not only in Bedfordshire, where he normally resided, but also in his native Derbyshire.10 C219/17/2. Before long, however, his circumstances were to change dramatically. As much of his wife’s property had consisted of her dower lands from her first husband, her death in early 1474 spelled for Booth the immediate loss of these holdings, which descended to her son Richard Enderby.11 C140/46/46. More dramatically, it also spelled his unceremonious expulsion from Bedfordshire society: from this date, he was no longer included in royal commissions in the county, and when the county bench came to be reappointed in May 1475 his name was omitted. His marriage to Maud had evidently remained childless: there was no mention of any offspring in the couple’s foundation in 1473 of a perpetual chantry dedicated to the Saviour, the Virgin, St. Thomas Becket, St. Winifred and St. Katherine at the Lady altar of the chapel of Stratton, which was to provide prayers for their souls, those of the King and queen, and those of Maud’s first husband, her parents, and Agnes Grey.12 CPR, 1467-77, p. 400. Moreover, in the years after Booth’s death there seems to have been some uncertainty over the identity of his heir.13 So, for instance, a settlement of property by the Chester city authorities on Booth’s brothers, the archdeacons of Durham and York, spoke only in general terms of Robert’s heirs: Cheshire and Chester Archs., Chester City recs., ZCHD/2/5. Yet he had not given up hope of fathering a child, for before long he had remarried, and it seems that his new union did, indeed, result in a daughter.

During his tenure of the Enderby lands, Booth played the part in Bedfordshire society for which his estates qualified him. His Crown appointments as escheator, sheriff and j.p. aside, he also fulfilled the more mundane duties of a leading landholder. Thus, in 1467 he was called upon in his capacity as patron of the church of Edworth to arbitrate a dispute between the local prior and the parson over a pension of 2s. payable by the parish to the priory.14 VCH Beds. ii. 226. Moreover, during his two decades of residence in Bedfordshire, Booth may have developed a genuine attachment to the county. His foundation in his wife’s lifetime of the chantry at Stratton aside, even after her death, in 1475, he was associated with his stepson Richard Enderby and others in founding a fraternity dedicated to the Holy Trinity in the church of St. Andrew at Biggleswade.15 CPR, 1467-77, p. 486.

At the same time, he maintained a professional legal practice, as well as sustaining close ties with the various branches of his prolific family. Much of his practice was focused on the city of London and its environs, and while it is impossible to gage its full extent accurately, there is periodic evidence of transactions turned sour and other minor disputes that it engendered. In 1457 Booth, alongside his uncle Laurence, had been named among the executors of the salter Thomas Beaumond.16 Salters’ Co. London, H1/2/1/7. Three years later he and an associate, the mercer William Groosman, were defendants in the staple court of Westminster in a suit for a statute staple bond for £68 17s. 6d., while the grocer Thomas Warwyk released to him all actions pending between them.17 C241/243/23; CCR, 1461-8, p. 434. In the autumn of 1465, Booth for his part was suing the pewterer John Veysy for a debt in the court of common pleas.18 CP40/817, rot. 475. A suit for arrears of rent and another debt that he brought two years later against the tailor Thomas Edward apparently related to his own property in the parish of St. Mary Woolchurch.19 CP40/824, rot. 534.

Like many of their kinsmen, Robert’s two brothers John and Ralph had benefited from the patronage of their mitred uncles and had respectively risen to become archdeacons of Durham and York,20 Chester City recs., ZCHD/2/5. Some of the older literature confuses Archdeacon John Booth with his synonymous first cousin, the bp. of Exeter, who was a son of Sir Robert Booth of Dunham Massey: Oxf. DNB, ‘Booth [Bothe], John’. while their sister Isabel – undoubtedly also through the good offices of her distinguished kin – had married Ralph Neville, son and heir of John, Lord Neville, who in 1484 would succeed his uncle as earl of Westmorland.21 CP, xii (2), 551. Robert likewise seems to have been at least loosely attached to the circle of Laurence Booth throughout his life, and was periodically associated with him in transactions concerning lands in London and the home counties.22 CP25(1)/294/75/5; KB27/790, att. rot. 1; 791, rot. 21; E40/5235. In other respects, however, it appears that relations among the numerous scions of the Booths were not always untroubled. Thus, in the mid 1460s Robert was quarrelling with his cousin Ralph (or Randolph), probably the son of that name of Ralph Booth of Bollin, Cheshire. The cousins’ connexion is now obscure, but it may have been a close one, since in 1471 Ralph gave Robert’s marital home of Stratton as his address. In 1467 their earlier disagreements, whatever their nature, were brought to a close by Ralph’s formal release of all actions to Robert.23 CCR, 1461-8, p. 434; C67/48, m. 35.

Booth died on 22 Feb. 1479, and was buried in the church of Sawley near his parents. His widow initially took a vow of chastity, but found herself unable to keep it, and before long contracted a new match with Robert Singleton. This proved a singularly unfortunate arrangement, even apart from the breach of Margaret’s vows, for Singleton developed an infatuation with his own stepdaughter, and had carnal relations with her.24 CPL, xiii (2), 835-6.