Robert Booth (judge)

Sir Robert Booth (1626 - 1680) was an English born judge who had a successful career as a judge in Ireland, holding the offices of Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas and Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench in Ireland.

Early life

He belonged to the wealthy Booth family of Salford; he was the son of Robert Booth and Anne Mosley, daughter of Oswald Moseley of Ancoats, who was the ancestor of the politician Sir Oswald Moseley. His father died young and his mother remarried the noted Presbyterian preacher Thomas Case.^[1] He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and St. John's College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1644.^[2] He entered Gray's Inn in 1642 and was called to the bar in 1650; he became an ancient of Gray's Inn in 1662.^[3]

Career

He is first heard of in Ireland in the entourage of William Steele, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland around 1657 and entered the King's Inns. After the Restoration he had the good fortune to attract the favour of Steele's successor, Sir Maurice Eustace. Eustace was normally hostile to anyone associated with Cromwell, but he admired Booth's abilities and believed his wealth would preserve him from corruption.^[4] Booth was appointed an ordinary justice of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) in 1660 and its Chief in 1670. He had already begun to suffer from the ill-health which plagued his later years.

In 1679 the Chief Justiceship of King's Bench became vacant. This was during the height of the Popish Plot, and a time when many Irish judges were suspected of Catholic sympathies, Booth had a reputation as a staunch Protestant. Charles II therefore appointed Booth, despite objections from James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, who thought him too extreme and rightly pointed out that he was almost incapacitated by illness.^[5] Ormond's objections on the second point were fully justified: Booth died in little over a year. He was buried at Salford.

Personal life

About 1659 he married Mary Potts of Chalgrove, who died in 1660 with their infant son. He remarried Susanna Oxenden of Deane in Kent, who died in 1669; they had four daughters.^[6] In Ireland he had a house at Oxmantown; his house at Drumcondra, Belvedere, is now St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra. The Gore-Booth baronets of Lissadell are relatives but not direct descendants.

References