Corfe Castle

Despite its small size – it had only 68 householders in the early 1660s – the borough of Corfe Castle was the most important settlement on the Isle of Purbeck, and the centre for the trade in local stone and marble.1Dorset Hearth Tax, 73-4; Historic Towns in Dorset, 44. The borough’s namesake was a massive Norman castle, which, on its near-impregnable site in a gap (or ‘corfe’) in the steep east-west chalk ridge across Purbeck, dominated the isle and commanded the southern approaches to nearby Wareham and Poole. The castle had been granted to Sir Christopher Hatton† by Elizabeth I, and he had secured the elevation of the town into a borough in 1576.2Hutchins, Dorset, i. 471; Coker’s Survey of Dorsetshire (1732), 53. Constitutionally, the borough was governed by a mayor, bailiff and burgesses (those who had formerly been mayor were styled ‘barons’).3Hutchins, Dorset, i. 472. In the early seventeenth century the burgesses included members of local gentry families, notably the Daccombes, who owned land in the extensive parish of Corfe Castle, the Cullifords of Encombe, the Swaynes of Kingston and the Dollings of Worth Matravers.4E179/105/329, m. 3; E179/105/334, m. 2; Hutchins, Dorset, i. 472, 480, 510, 515-6. The dominant figure was the lord of the manor of Corfe, who also acted as lord lieutenant and admiral of the isle of Purbeck.5Hutchins, Dorset, i. 471. The purchase of the lordship by Charles I’s attorney-general, Sir John Bankes† in 1635, seems to have brought a revival of seigneurial influence over the town, supported by their tenants and agents in Purbeck, including the Grenes, Okedens, and Ettricks.6CCC 1658; Dorset RO, D/BKL Box 8C/64: Lady Bankes’s accts. 1633-48.

The corporation had much to gain from the lordship of Sir John Bankes. In 1635 Bankes used his influence to make sure the Ship Money rate in Dorset fell much more heavily on commercial towns, such as Dorchester, while Corfe paid only £10.7CSP Dom. 1635, p. 331; D. Underdown, Fire from Heaven (1993), 185. The underrating of Corfe ended in November 1635, when the privy council allowed the new sheriff, Sir Thomas Trenchard*, to set his own rate. Trenchard, who had close links with Dorchester, cut its rate significantly, but quadrupled Corfe’s contribution to £40.8CSP Dom. 1635, p. 502. By April 1636, a number of prominent Purbeck men had refused to pay, including Giles Grene*, William Savage and one of the Swayne tenants in Corfe itself.9CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 395. In March 1637, the Ship Money rate again imposed £40 on Corfe, and this prompted a petition from the borough to the privy council in the following June, ‘complaining of the over-charge by you laid upon the said town this year’, and expressing fears that the high rates would become a precedent for future taxes.10PC Regs. June-Oct. 1637, 51.

The dispute over Ship Money was not symptomatic of widespread religious or political disaffection in Corfe during the 1630s, and the burgesses seem to have been happy to comply in other respects with the wishes of the Bankes family and the demands of the crown. In the elections for the Short Parliament of April 1640, the queen’s favourite, Henry Jermyn*, was returned with the Bankes’ local ally, Giles Grene. In the Long Parliament elections, Grene was again elected, this time with the secretary of state, Sir Francis Windebanke*.11C219/42/93; C219/43/160. As both Jermyn and Windebanke were carpet-baggers, and both had potentially embarrassing connections with Catholics at court, it seems that they were government nominees, supported by the compliant attorney-general, and this suggest that the Corfe burgesses were unwilling to oppose candidates put forward on the Bankes interest. Local support for Bankes could have certain advantages: in refusing to raise troops for the second bishops’ war in September 1640, John Dolling and Richard Swayne claimed exemption under Bankes as attorney-general.12CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 103. This seigneurial dominance continued in January 1641, when the fugitive Windebanke (who had fled to France to avoid impeachment) was replaced as MP for the borough by Sir John Bankes’s son-in-law, John Borlase.13CJ ii. 53a; C219/43/162.

During the first civil war the castle at Corfe was at first held for the king by Lady Bankes, wife of Sir John, but after his death in December 1644 she travelled to Oxford and then London, leaving her home to be garrisoned by regular royalist troops.14P. Little, ‘Lady Bankes Defends Corfe Castle’, History Today lxv. 13-15. The reaction of the townsfolk to the civil war is revealing of their attitudes towards the Bankes family. Although there was widespread resistance to the king’s commissioners of array in Dorset in the closing months of 1642, few Corfe-men joined Parliament: the listed volunteers in the Dorchester garrison at the beginning of 1643, for example, included many men from Bridport and Netherbury, but only one from Corfe.15Recs. of Dorchester ed. Mayo, 685. By contrast, several prominent Corfe burgesses are known to have been in arms for the king: John Dolling, mayor in 1640, was a member of the royalist garrison at Sherborne in 1642; and another prominent burgess, Brune Daccombe, later claimed that he helped to defend Corfe Castle because he held land in the borough by ‘castle guard’ tenure.16CCC 1315, 1658. There is also evidence that two other burgesses, Robert Culliford and William Ettrick, joined the king at this time, and other Corfe-men were later listed as taking the Negative Oath imposed on repentant royalists.17Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 16, 93; Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, f. 5.

The overt royalism of the borough was no doubt influenced by the castle on its very doorstep. From the summer of 1645, however, Parliament’s imminent victory and the fate of local royalists at the hands of the Dorset sequestration committee seem to have brought a mass defection from the king’s cause – perhaps encouraged by the absence of the Bankes family from the castle. Thus John Dolling surrendered to Parliament in November 1645, ‘whilst his whole estate was under power of the king’s garrison’; and Robert Culliford defected on the strength of promises of indemnity from prosecution.18CCC 1315; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 16. In December 1645 the Committee of Both Kingdoms instructed Fairfax to redouble his efforts to take the castle, in part because the people who had declared for Parliament in Purbeck faced reprisals from the garrison.19CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 269-70. The castle fell in February 1646, betrayed by the royalist officer, Lieutenant-colonel Pitman, who was promised money and immunity from prosecution.20Bodl. Tanner 60, ff. 477-8, 508, 510-11. It was later alleged that many of the townspeople had purloined from the castle household goods and furnishings belonging to the Bankes family.21G. Bankes, The Story of Corfe Castle (1853), 248-9.

After the fall of the castle, the borough of Corfe came under the control of the local county committee. On 16 April 1646 the burgesses elected as their new MP the staunch committeeman, Francis Chettell, in the place of Borlase.22CJ iv. 286b; C219/43/164. With its castle slighted and the Bankes family estates sequestered, the fortunes of the borough declined during the late 1640s and early 1650s. Both Grene and Chettell were secluded from the Commons at Pride’s Purge in December 1648, and no by-elections were held; in December 1653, under the terms of the Instrument of Government, Corfe lost its right to return MPs to Westminster. The inhabitants appear to have been reluctant to cooperate with the commonwealth regime, and in March 1653 evaded the efforts of the naval press-gangs.23CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 547. The rehabilitation of former royalists in the late 1650s seems to have been welcomed in Corfe Castle as elsewhere. The elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of January 1659 saw a resurgence of a pro-royalist group in Dorset, led by Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* and John Fitzjames*. In the Corfe Castle election, this party apparently secured the election of a Purbeck gentleman, John Tregonwell* of Anderson, probably working in conjunction with the new lord of the manor, Sir Ralph Bankes*, who was also returned.24Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 63-4.

The Restoration saw the re-establishment of control over the borough by Sir Ralph Bankes and his family. In April 1660, ‘our beloved and trusty friends’ Bankes and Tregonwell were again elected by the borough.25C219/49, unfol. In August of that year, Bankes petitioned the king for the return of his rights as lord lieutenant of Purbeck, a request granted in 1662.26CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 240; Dorset RO, D/BKL, Box 8C/117. The removal of the Bankes family to their new mansion at Kingston Lacy (near Wimborne Minster, in the east of the county) later in the decade did not break their political influence over the borough of Corfe Castle, which remained their pocket borough until its disenfranchisement in 1832.