Lot Essay
The salver is listed in the Earl's manuscript inventory, folio 12, amongst '10 dessert waiters' with the weight 41=9.
George Booth, 2nd Earl of Warrington has been the subject of authoritative articles by the late John Hayward and more recently, by Timothy Schroder. The story of his life and silver is well known. A patron of the leading silversmiths of his day, the Earl formed a collection of plate which provides an illuminating portrait of this somewhat dry and unattractive man who was obsessed by money and genealogy. He married Mary, daughter of John Oldbury, a rich London merchant, in 1702. She brought him 40,000 but the marriage was a disaster; in P. Bliss' 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 debts, they quarrell'd and lived in the same house as absolute strangers to each other at bed and board'. Their personalities appear to have been equally unattractive - he is described as 'the stiffest of all stiff things' and his Countess as 'a limber, dirty fool' while of the Earl, another wrote 'this gentleman makes no great figure in his country Parliament or person'.
The Earl's inventory, entitled 'The Particulars of my Plate and Weight', comprises some seventeen manuscript pages, listing every piece of silver he acquired (but not those he inherited) and giving us invaluable information about the function of various objects
George Booth, 2nd Earl of Warrington has been the subject of authoritative articles by the late John Hayward and more recently, by Timothy Schroder. The story of his life and silver is well known. A patron of the leading silversmiths of his day, the Earl formed a collection of plate which provides an illuminating portrait of this somewhat dry and unattractive man who was obsessed by money and genealogy. He married Mary, daughter of John Oldbury, a rich London merchant, in 1702. She brought him 40,000 but the marriage was a disaster; in P. Bliss' 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 debts, they quarrell'd and lived in the same house as absolute strangers to each other at bed and board'. Their personalities appear to have been equally unattractive - he is described as 'the stiffest of all stiff things' and his Countess as 'a limber, dirty fool' while of the Earl, another wrote 'this gentleman makes no great figure in his country Parliament or person'.
The Earl's inventory, entitled 'The Particulars of my Plate and Weight', comprises some seventeen manuscript pages, listing every piece of silver he acquired (but not those he inherited) and giving us invaluable information about the function of various objects