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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.