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Biography

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Lawrence Booth was an English churchman and royal administrator of the fifteenth century who became Bishop of Durham and later Archbishop of York. He was born in the early fifteenth century, conventionally dated around 1420, into the Booth family of Barton near Eccles in Lancashire. He was a younger son of John Booth, lord of the manor of Barton, and a half-brother of William Booth, who served as Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield and then as Archbishop of York from 1452 to 1464. The Booths were established Lancashire gentry whose church connections helped several sons into ecclesiastical careers.

Booth was educated at the University of Cambridge and was closely tied to Pembroke Hall, of which he became Master in 1450, remaining in that office until his death. He took degrees in civil law, a training that suited both cathedral administration and royal service. In the mid-1450s he served as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. His early preferments included a prebend in St Paul's Cathedral and the archdeaconry of Stow in the diocese of Lincoln. By the middle of the century he had entered Lancastrian government: he became Keeper of the Privy Seal under Henry VI and was favoured by Queen Margaret of Anjou.

In 1457 he was provided to the palatine bishopric of Durham, a wealthy northern see whose bishops exercised extensive temporal jurisdiction. As a Lancastrian he suffered after the Yorkist victory. Edward IV seized the temporalities of Durham; they were restored only after Booth submitted to the new king. Thereafter he accommodated himself to Yorkist rule and in 1473–1474 served Edward IV as Lord Chancellor of England. In 1476 he was translated from Durham to York as archbishop, occupying the same metropolitan see that his half-brother William had held.

Booth died on 19 May 1480 at the archiepiscopal manor of Southwell in Nottinghamshire. He was buried in Southwell Minster, in a chapel of St John the Baptist which he had founded. He remained Master of Pembroke Hall to the end of his life and was a benefactor of that college. He is remembered as a lawyer-prelate who moved from Lancastrian service to high office under Edward IV, a path typical of English bishops who sought to keep their sees through the Wars of the Roses. He was never regarded as a saint and has no feast day or cult.

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