BOOTH, Roger, of Hollingside in Whickham, co. Durham.

Unlike the majority of the parliamentary burgesses who represented Newcastle-upon-Tyne in our period, Roger Booth was not apparently involved in trade, and never held any important office in the borough. He had, however, established connexions there by 1409, when he began witnessing a series of local deeds. He was first returned to the House of Commons two years later, and went on to sit at least five more times, as well as attending the elections held in Newcastle to the Parliaments of 1417, 1426, 1427, 1431 and 1447.CCR, 1413-19, p. 63; Arch. Aeliana (ser. 4), xiv. 37; xxviii. 125; C219/12/2, 13/4, 5, 14/2. His main interests, however, lay in the property market, in which he was active both as a feoffee and on his own account. In 1424 he offered sureties to Bishop Langley of Durham on behalf of William Blithman as keeper of the Belasise estates; and not long afterwards he appeared with his parliamentary colleague, the lawyer, Robert Whelpington, as a trustee of (Sir) William Lumley’s property in Eighton. One of his associates was none other than Henry, earl of Northumberland, who was the patron of his friend, John Tyndale, the then claimant to the manor of Dilston and other extensive estates along the Scottish border. At some point before August 1430, Tyndale assembled a force of about 80 armed men, including Roger Booth, and proceeded to evict his rival, William Claxton, from the manor. Since he had prudently conveyed his title to the earl before embarking on the offensive, his adversary was obliged to take action against Northumberland as well as his henchmen, although in the end he won his case. Booth himself was clearly a figure of some consequence among the local gentry, for besides owning land in Burradon near Newcastle he acquired the manor of Holingside from Thomas Redhugh (d.1442), albeit without observing all the necessary legal formalities. Towards the end of his life, in 1445, he regularized this transaction by obtaining a licence from Bishop Neville of Durham, the feudal overlord, who permitted him to settle the manor upon his wife, Thomasina, for life with reversion to his two daughters, Elizabeth and Thomasina. Elizabeth had by then married Sampson Hardyng’s younger son, Roger, which in itself provides further evidence of the family’s standing in county society. Booth’s decision to entail a final remainder upon the earl of Northumberland suggests that he had retained his earlier links with the Percys, no doubt using their support to consolidate his position even further.DKR, xxxiii. 172; xxxiv. 180-1; xliv. 489; Hist. Northumb. x. 260; R. Surtees, Durham, ii. 250; Feudal Aids, iv. 83; Arch. Aeliana (ser. 4), xvi. 60.

Booth was still alive in December 1451, being mentioned as the only survivor of a long series of trustees of lands and tenements initially set aside almost a century earlier for the endowment of a chantry in St. Nicholas’s church, Newcastle.J. Brand, Hist. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, i. 250.