The borough was abolished in the Reform Act 1832, and from the 1832 general election its territory was included in the new county constituency of Isle of Wight.
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, which destroyed much of the town as well as other settlements on the island, sealed its permanent decline.
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 (who also nursed the other two Isle of Wight boroughs, Newport and Yarmouth, for the government[1]) negotiated the election of the government's nominee for the other, unless he wanted it for a member of the Holmes family.