Fowey elected two members to the unreformed House of Commons until the Reform Act 1832 stripped it of its representation as a rotten borough, it having lost its borough corporation a few years before. It was restored as a municipal borough in 1913, and then was merged with the nearby and much larger St Austell in 1968 to form the borough of St Austell with Fowey. This was itself in 1974 replaced with the Restormel Borough, which was replaced by Cornwall Council in 2009.