- Corfe Castle (UK Parliament constituency)
-
Corfe Castle Former Borough constituency for the House of Commons 1572–1832 Number of 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
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.
Members of Parliament
1572-1640
Parliament First member Second member Parliament of 1572-1581 Edmund Uvedale Charles Matthew 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 ? [1] ? 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 TracieParliament 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 Grocer No Parliament summoned 1629-1640 1640-1832
Year First member First party Second member Second party April 1640 Thomas Jermyn Henry Jermyn Royalist November 1640 Sir Francis Windebank [2] Royalist Giles Green Parliamentarian 1641 John Borlase [3] 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 [4] April 1679 Sir Nathaniel Napier September 1679 Nathaniel Bond 1681 Richard Fownes 1689 William Okeden 1690 William Culliford [5] 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
- ^ 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.
- ^ Expelled from the House of Commons, December 1641
- ^ Created a baronet, May 1642
- ^ 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
- ^ 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.
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]
- Maija Jansson (ed.), Proceedings in Parliament, 1614 (House of Commons) (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988)
- 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)
- Browne Willis, Notitia Parliamentaria (London, 1750) [3]
- Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "C" (part 5)
Categories:- Parliamentary constituencies in Dorset (historic)
- United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies established in 1572
- United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies disestablished in 1832
- Rotten boroughs
- United Kingdom historical constituency stubs
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
