Booth, Sir Robert (1626–81), judge, was baptised 2 July 1626, the eldest son of Robert Booth (d. a. August 1637) of Salford, Lancashire, and Ann, daughter of Oswald Mosley of Manchester. After an education at Manchester grammar school and St John's College, Cambridge, he was called to the English bar in November 1649. He moved to Ireland in the 1650s, and was admitted to the King's Inns in January 1657.
After the restoration of the monarchy, through the influence of the lord chancellor, Sir Maurice Eustace (qv) (1595?–1665), Booth was appointed third justice of the common pleas on 1 December 1660. His remuneration was set some years later, on 1 April 1666, at £300. He was promoted to chief justice of the common pleas on 30 January 1670. Eventually, though his nonconformist sympathies had been an impediment until the ‘popish plot’, he was promoted to chief justice of the king's bench on 26 March 1679. Partly, at least, owing to ill-health (‘gout and other diseases’) he was seldom fit to carry out his duties, and he paid frequent visits to England, on one of which, in 1668, he was knighted by Charles II (on 15 May). Booth died in February or March 1681, and he was buried at Salford on 2 March. He married first, about 1651, Mary, daughter of Spencer Potts of Chargrove, Bedfordshire; she died in September 1660, having given him a son, Benjamin, who died in 1663. Booth married second Susanna, daughter of Sir Henry Oxenden of Deane, Kent; she died in 1669, having given him four daughters. A man of great wealth, with several Irish estates as well as inherited property in Lancashire, Booth resided, when in Ireland, in the Dublin suburb of Oxmantown and in the country at Drumcondra.