The 2nd Earl of Warrington was the most important patron of English Huguenot goldsmiths, and formed a celebrated collection of plate which provides us today with an illuminating portrait of this extraordinary man, obsessed by both money and genealogy.

His father's loyalty to King William III brought him an Earldom but on his death in 1693 his son inherited, along with the title, huge debts. The young Earl quickly set about finding a rich heiress to marry and after several recorded liasons he married in 1702 Mary, the daughter of John Oldbury, a rich London merchant. Her dowry was /p4,000, and although financially rewarding to Booth, the marriage was a disaster. In P. Bliss's copy of Royal and Noble Authors in the British Museum, there appears in the margin the following oft-quoted remark: "some years after my lady had consign'd up her whole fortune to pay my lord's debt, they quarrell'd and lived in the same house as absolute strangers to eachother at bed and board."

During his lifetime Booth is said to have planted 100,000 trees at the family seat, Dunham Massey, in Cheshire as well as putting the estate on a sound financial footing. He is best remembered, however, for his remarkable collection of silver and silver-gilt. As a commodity readily convertible into cash, silver objects were not thought of as frivolous. Between about 1706 and 1755, the 2nd Earl amassed a huge collection chiefly made by the leading Huguenot goldsmiths of the day, including a number of pieces by Paul de Lamerie.

The pride he took in his silver is shown by the meticulous inventory which he drew up in his own hand in 1750 and which he amended four years later. Entitled "The Particulars of my Plate and its Weight," it comprises seventeen manuscript pages, listing every piece that he acquired, each with precise weight and many with the location of its place in the house.

It has been recorded on many occasions that the solidity of a piece and its functional use were far more important to George Booth than its design. The majority of his silver was plain and, with the exception of a finely engraved coat-of-arms or monogram, was devoid of decoration. Of course there were exceptions, in particular a set of six George II silver sconces heavily chased with classical figures, sold Sotheby's 3rd May 1990, lot 156, and a set of silver-gilt salvers, each with finely engraved rococo ornament incorporating Warrington's monogram (sold Christie's, London, April 27, 1995, lot 81).

The Earl and his wife had only one daughter, Mary, who married Henry Grey, 4th Earl of Stamford in 1736. After Warrington's death in 1758, Dunham Massey passed to them and subsequently descended in the Grey family, Earls of Stamford. A significant portion of the Warrington plate was sold by their heirs at Christie's in two sales--April 20, 1921 and February 25, 1931. Other peices passed out of the collection privately or descended to other branches of the family such as a pair of magnificent chandeliers by Peter Archambo made in 1734 and weighing over 1,000 ounces, now in an English private collection.

Two similar soap boxes also engraved with the monogram and coronet of the 2nd Earl of Warrington were sold from the Tythrop Park Collection, Christie's, London, April 27, 1995, lots 87 and 88.