 During most of the Elizabethan period, Langton seems to have allowed the Duchy of Lancaster to nominate many of the members, which may have been a "quid pro quo" for Newton's being enfranchised in the first place, but later patrons could regard its parliamentary seats as their personal property.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.