Delamere

Delamere (or De la Mer), GEORGE BOOTH, 1st Baron (1622-1684), son of William Booth, a member of an ancient family settled at Dunham Massey in Cheshire, and of Vere, daughter and co-heir of Sir Thomas Egerton, was born in August 1622\. He took an active part in the Civil War with his grandfather, Sir George Booth, on the parliamentary side. He was returned for Cheshire to the Long Parliament in 1645 and to Cromwell’s parliaments of 1654 and 1656. In 1655 he was appointed military commissioner for Cheshire and treasurer at war. He was one of the excluded members who tried and failed to regain their seats after the fall of Richard Cromwell in 1659. He had for some time been regarded by the royalists as a well-wisher to their cause, and was described to the king in May 1659 as “very considerable in his country, a presbyterian in opinion, yet so moral a man.... I think your Majesty may safely [rely] on him and his promises which are considerable and hearty.”1 He now became one of the chief leaders of the new “royalists” who at this time united with the cavaliers to effect the restoration. A rising was arranged for the 5th of August in several districts, and Booth took charge of operations in Cheshire, Lancashire and North Wales. He got possession of Chester on the 19th, issued a proclamation declaring that arms had been taken up “in vindication of the freedom of parliament, of the known laws, liberty and property,” and marched towards York. The plot, however, was known to Thurloe. It had entirely failed in other parts of the country, and Lambert advancing with his forces defeated Booth’s men at Nantwich Bridge. Booth himself escaped disguised as a woman, but was discovered at Newport Pagnell on the 23rd in the act of shaving, and was imprisoned in the Tower. He was, however, soon liberated, took his seat in the parliament of 1659-1660, and was one of the twelve members deputed to carry the message of the Commons to Charles II. at the Hague. In July 1660 he received a grant of £10,000, having refused the larger sum of £20,000 at first offered to him, and on the 20th of April 1661, on the occasion of the coronation, he was created Baron Delamere, with a licence to create six new knights. The same year he was appointed custos rotulorum of Cheshire. In later years he showed himself strongly antagonistic to the reactionary policy of the government. He died on the 8th of August 1684, and was buried at Bowdon. He married (1) Lady Catherine Clinton, daughter and co-heir of Theophilus, 4th earl of Lincoln, by whom he had one daughter; and (2) Lady Elizabeth Grey, daughter of Henry, 1st earl of Stamford, by whom, besides five daughters, he had seven sons, the second of whom, Henry, succeeded him in the title and estates and was created earl of Warrington. The earldom became extinct on the death of the latter’s son, the 2nd earl, without male issue, in 1758, and the barony of Delamere terminated in the person of the 4th baron in 1770; the title was revived in 1821 in the Cholmondeley family.

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1 Clarendon, State Papers, iii. 472.

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