[3] Elected to gentleman's club Brooks's in 1817, Calcraft was brought into Parliament for the first time at his father's borough of Wareham.
Despite this, he voted against William Wilberforce's compromise motion on the Queen Caroline affair in 1820, for parliamentary reform in 1822, against the Irish unlawful societies bill in 1825, and for alteration for the corn laws in 1825.
He had just one intervention during this period of his career, presenting a petition of the journeymen fishmongers of Westminster, who wanted to sell fish after 10:00.
[3] In 1828, he became deputy Postmaster General of the United Kingdom to his father, and then began to take part in local affairs, chairing the anniversary meeting of the Wareham Church Missionary Society in August of the same year.
[3] Calcraft died in 1880 at St George Hanover Square, London, and was noted by The Times as a "fine example of the country gentleman and the squire", while the writer Jane Ellen Panton in 1909 said he was "one of the most magnificient [sic?]