 Langton's heir sold the manor to the Fleetwood family in 1594, the sale explicitly including the right of ""the nomination, election and appointment"" of the two burgesses representing the borough in Parliament, one of the earliest recorded instances of the right to elect MPs being bought and sold.By the first half of the next century it had passed to the Leghs, who owned it for the rest of its existence.By the time of the Great Reform Act of 1832, Newton was one of the most notorious of all England's pocket boroughs, mainly because the Legh control was more complete than that of the patrons in most other constituencies.