Corfe Castle (UK Parliament constituency) explained

Corfe Castle
Type:	borough
Parliament:	uk
Year:	1572
Abolished:	1832
Elects Howmany:	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.

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, in 156 houses. (The portion of the town outside the borough contained another 141 houses.^[1])

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.^[2]

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.

Members of Parliament

1572–1640

Parliament	First member	Second member
Parliament of 1572–1581	Edmund Uvedale	Charles Mathew
Parliament of 1584–1585	John Clavell	Francis Hawley
Parliament of 1586–1587	Sir William Hatton
Parliament of 1588–1589
Parliament of 1593	William Tate	Francis Flower
Parliament of 1597–1598	Francis James^[3] ^[4]	John Foyle
Parliament of 1601	John Durning	John Davies
Parliament of 1604–1611	Edward Dackombe	Sir John Hobart
Addled Parliament (1614)	John Dackombe	James Whitelocke Chose to sit for Woodstock Elected in his place Sir Thomas Tracie
Parliament of 1621–1622	Sir Thomas Hatton	Sir Thomas Hammond
Happy Parliament (1624–1625)	Sir Francis Nethersale	Sir Peter Osborne
Useless Parliament (1625)
Parliament of 1625–1626	Edward Dackombe	Sir Robert Napier
Parliament of 1628–1629	Sir Francis Nethersale	Giles Green
No parliament summoned 1629–1640

1640–1832

Year		First member	First party		Second member	Second party
April 1640					Henry Jermyn	Royalist
November 1640		Sir Francis Windebank^[5]			Giles Green
1641		John Borlase^[6]
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
May 1659	Corfe Castle was not represented in the restored Rump Parliament
April 1660		Sir Ralph Bankes			John Tregonwell	<	-- party -->
1677		Viscount Latimer
February 1679		Viscount Osborne^[7]
April 1679		Sir Nathaniel Napier	<				-- party -->
September 1679					Nathaniel Bond
1681					Richard Fownes	<	-- party -->
1689		William Okeden
1690		William Culliford^[8]	<				-- party -->
1698					John Bankes	<	-- party -->
1699		Richard Fownes
1715		Denis Bond	<	-- party -->		William Okeden
1718					Joshua Churchill
1721					John Bond
1722					John Bankes	<	-- party -->
1727		John Bond	<				-- party -->
1741					Henry Bankes	<	-- party -->
1744		Thomas Erle Drax
1747		John Bond
1761		Viscount Malpas	<				-- party -->
1762					John Campbell	<	-- party -->
1764		John Bond	<				-- party -->
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

References

• Robert Beatson, A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807)
• 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)
• Maija Jansson (ed.), Proceedings in Parliament, 1614 (House of Commons) (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988)
• 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 F. W. S. Craig - Chichester: Parliamentary Reference Publications, 1973)
• 1. 2. 1.

Notes and References

1. Book: Parliamentary representation: Copies of instructions given by the Secretary of State for the Home Department with reference to parliamentary representation ; likewise Copies of letters or reports in answer to such instructions . IV. & V. . 19 January 1832 . 290 . 29 July 2019 . en . Corfe Castle.
2. Page 146, Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (2nd edition - London: St Martin's Press, 1957)
3. Web site: Corfe Castle | History of Parliament Online. www.historyofparliamentonline.org.
4. Browne Willis gives the same names, with only the slightest variation (John Frankland or Frank and Samson or Sampson Hussey), as having been elected for both Wareham and Corfe Castle, which he unsurprisingly queries.
5. Expelled from the House of Commons, December 1641.
6. Created a baronet, May 1642.
7. 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.
8. 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.