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.
^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.
^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.
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)