Tulsk was incorporated by Charles II in 1663. The corporation comprised a portreeve, 15 free burgesses and a commonalty. It was empowered to send two MPs to parliament. It appears always to have belonged to the Roscommon branch of the Caulfeild family, seven members of which represented it during the period 1692-1786. In the mid-eighteenth century it belonged to St George Caulfeild (0371), Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench 1751 to 1760, when he retired. He was unmarried and did not die until 1778, when he left his sister, Mrs Walcott, a life interest in his estate and the borough. His residuary heir was his nephew William Caulfeild (0377), who sat for Tulsk from 1769 to 1786, when he died in Mrs Walcott's lifetime. The owner of the village of Tulsk was Mr Fox Lane, but the Caulfeilds owned the corporation. Mrs Walcott, who was well known for her independent spirit, did not die until 1797.346 In 1790 it was said that:
This private Borough, whose electors are now reduced to a small number of dependant Burgesses, has been for some time under the influence and control of that branch of the Caulfeild family of which the late Lord Chief Justice Caulfeild was the head and is at present the sole property of Mrs Walcot, his surviving sister and one of the richest females in the Empire.347
Tulsk was disfranchised in 1800 by the Act of Union; the £15,000 compensation was paid to James Caulfeild, the guardian of St George Caulfield, a minor, under the terms of the will of Lord Chief Justice Caulfeild, a copy of which was requested by the Commissioners.348
