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.

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 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		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

1. 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.
2. Expelled from the House of Commons, December 1641
3. Created a baronet, May 1642
4. 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
5. 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)
• 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)
• 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)
• Willis, Browne (1750). Notitia Parliamentaria, Part II: A Series or Lists of the Representatives in the several Parliaments held from the Reformation 1541, to the Restoration 1660 ... London. p. 1.
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "C" (part 5)