History
Newtown, located on the large natural harbour on the north-western coast of the Isle of Wight, was the first borough established in the county. A French raid in 1377, that destroyed much of the town as well as other Island settlements, sealed its permanent decline. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was a small settlement long eclipsed by the more easily defended town of Newport. In an attempt to stimulate economic development, Elizabeth I awarded the town two parliamentary seats.
Newtown was a burgage borough, meaning that the right to vote was vested solely in the owners of a specified number of properties or "burgage tenements". At the time of the Great Reform Act of 1832 there were 39 burgage tenements, held by 23 burgesses; however, most of these held only life grants. (It was common practice for life grants to be made to friends of the proprietors so as to ensure that the full voting power could be exercised; if these nominees failed to vote as expected they could be ejected and replaced by somebody more reliable before the next election. These voters were often non-resident - and indeed, it could hardly be otherwise, for although the borough contained 39 properties to which the right to vote was attached there were only 14 houses.) Unlike many rotten boroughs, no single landowner controlled a majority of the burgages, the reversionary right in them belonging to three families (Barrington, Holmes and Anderson-Pelham), so divided that any two had a majority over the third. Elections in the borough consequently required careful management and sometimes considerable expenditure to achieve the desired result. In the 1750s and 1760s, the arrangement was that one of the two seats was considered to be in the gift of the Barrington family, while Thomas Holmes negotiated the election of the government's nominee for the other, unless he wanted it for a member of the Holmes family.
By 1831, the borough had a population of just 68, and it was disestablished the following year by the Reform Act.
Read more about this topic: Newtown (UK Parliament Constituency)
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