Corfe Castle (UK Parliament constituency)

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Corfe Castle
Borough constituency
Created: 1572
Abolished: 1832
Type: House of Commons
Members: two

Corfe Castle was a parliamentary borough in Dorset, which elected two Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons from 1572 until 1832, when it was abolished by the Great Reform Act.

Contents

[edit] History

Corfe Castle was made a borough by Queen Elizabeth I, through the influence of Sir Christopher Hatton, who had been granted the manor. The borough consisted of the town of Corfe Castle on the Isle of Purbeck, once a market town but by the 19th century little more than a village, where the main economic interests were clay and stone quarrying. In 1831, the population of the borough was approximately 960, and the town contained 156 houses.

The right to vote was exercised by all householders (resident or not) paying scot and lot; in 1816 this amounted to only 44 voters, and all but 14 of those were non-resident. The local landowners were able to exercise almost total influence. In the late 18th and early 19th century, the Bankes family (who had owned the castle since 1640) nominated the member for one of the seats and the Bond family for the other.

Corfe Castle was abolished as a separate constituency by the Reform Act; however, the nearby borough of Wareham kept one of its MPs, and Corfe Castle was included within the expanded boundaries of the revised Wareham constituency.

[edit] Members of Parliament

[edit] 1572-1640

  • 1586-1589: Sir William Hatton
  • 1604-1611: Sir John Hobart
  • 1604-1611: Edward Duncombe
  • 1621-1622: Sir Thomas Hatton
  • 1621-1622: Sir Thomas Hammond
  • 1626-1628: Sir Robert Napier
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

[edit] 1640-1832

Year First member First party Second member Second party
April 1640 Thomas Jermyn Royalist Henry Jermyn Royalist
November 1640 Sir Francis Windebank [1] Royalist Giles Green Parliamentarian
1641 John Borlase [2] Royalist
March 1644 Borlase disabled from sitting - seat vacant
1645 Francis Chettel
December 1648 Chettel not recorded as sitting after Pride's Purge Green excluded in Pride's Purge - seat vacant
1653 Corfe Castle unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament and the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate
January 1659 Sir Ralph Bankes John Tregonwell
May 1659 Corfe Castle was not represented in the restored Rump
April 1660 Sir Ralph Bankes John Tregonwell
1677 Viscount Latimer
February 1679 Viscount Osborne [3]
April 1679 Sir Nathaniel Napier
September 1679 Nathaniel Bond
1681 Richard Fownes
1689 William Okeden
1690 William Culliford [4]
1698 John Bankes
1699 Richard Fownes
1715 Denis Bond William Okeden
1718 Joshua Churchill
1721 John Bond
1722 John Bankes
1727 John Bond
1741 Henry Bankes
1761 Viscount Malpas
1762 John Campbell
1764 John Bond
1768 John Jenkinson
1780 John Bond Whig Henry Bankes Tory
1801 Nathaniel Bond Whig
1807 Peter William Baker Tory
1816 George Bankes Tory
1823 John Bond Tory
1826 George Bankes Tory
1828 Nathaniel William Peach Tory
1829 Philip John Miles Tory
1832 Constituency abolished

Notes

  1. ^ Expelled from the House of Commons, December 1641
  2. ^ Created a baronet, May 1642
  3. ^ On petition (in a dispute over the franchise), Osborne was found not to have been duly elected and his opponent, Napier, was declared elected in his place
  4. ^ Following a petition against Culliford's re-election in 1698, he was found by the Commons Committee to have secured his election by illegal practices, and was declared not duly elected. A by-election was held.

[edit] References

  • Robert Beatson, A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807) [1]
  • D Brunton & D H Pennington, Members of the Long Parliament (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
  • Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803 (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808) [2]
  • Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (2nd edition - London: St Martin's Press, 1961)
  • J Holladay Philbin, Parliamentary Representation 1832 - England and Wales (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)
  • Henry Stooks Smith, "The Parliaments of England from 1715 to 1847" (2nd edition, edited by FWS Craig - Chichester: Parliamentary Reference Publications, 1973)
  • Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page
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