Robert Booth

Sir Robert Booth (1626–1681) was an English-born judge who had a highly successful career in Ireland, where he held 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 Booth family of Salford: he was the eldest son of Robert Booth, a wealthy landowner, and Anne Mosley, daughter of Oswald Mosley of Ancoats, Manchester, (who was also the ancestor of the prominent twentieth-century politician Sir Oswald Mosley), and his wife Anne Lowe. Booth himself, though he was a member of the Church of England, had strong nonconformist leanings. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and St. John's College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1644. 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.

Career He is first heard of in Ireland in the entourage of William Steele, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, in 1657, and entered the King's Inns the same year. After the Restoration he had the good fortune to attract the notice of Steele's successor, Sir Maurice Eustace. Booth was appointed a puisne justice of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) in 1660 and its Chief Justice in 1670, by which time he had already begun to suffer from the chronic ill-health which plagued his later years. His salary was fixed at £300 a year. He was a Bencher of the King's Inns and lived conveniently close to the Inns on present-day Church Street. He was one of the original Governors of the Erasmus Smith schools. He regularly visited England to consult with his medical advisers, and was knighted while on a trip to England in 1668.

Lord Chief Justice

In 1679 the Chief Justiceship of the Court of King's Bench (Ireland) became vacant. This occurred at the height of the Popish Plot, which created an uncontrollable atmosphere of anti-Catholic hysteria. At this time several Irish judges had open Roman Catholic sympathies, despite the practice of that faith being (in theory) a bar to public office. Booth, who had been brought up by his Puritan stepfather, who closely supervised his education, Of their daughters Ann married her distant cousin the Right Reverend Robert Booth, Dean of Bristol, and was the mother of the celebrated actor Barton Booth. Her sister Susannah married Sir John Feilding, a grandson of the Earl of Desmond, and secretary to the Governor of Jamaica, and had issue. Another daughter Elizabeth married John Braithwaite.

His principal residence was at Oxmantown, on present-day Church Street, adjacent to the King's Inns: it was rated for the hearth tax on ten hearths, making it one of the largest dwelling houses in the city. In 1664 he petitioned for a right of way through the Inns garden: "that he might come a nearer way, privately into the house".

Belvidere, his house at Drumcondra, Dublin, is now St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra.

The Gore-Booth baronets of Lissadell are related to but not direct descendants of the judge.