Calcraft was educated in Christ Church of Oxford University. While at Oxford, John Stuart Wortley reported that ‘little Calcraft has been great fun lately. Like his father and grandfather before him, Calcraft seemed to had a passion for theatre. He purchased a commission to the army in 1824 and was made an unattached captain in 1826. Having been elected to Brooks’, 21 Feb. 1825, it may have been he, not his brother John, who carried to Lord Lansdowne a message from the Whig meeting at the club in April 1827 urging him not to break off negotiations for joining the Canning administration. However, he may have been out of the country at that time, as he certainly served abroad for a while with his regiment. On his return in 1828, Calcraft became enamoured with Sarah Emma Love, an actress known for her role in Cobb’s comic opera: The Siege of Belgrade. In November 1828, at St. Pancras church they married. The marriage was kept secret from his father, who he thought would disapprove, and from her mother for a brief period of time. In February of 1830, he was granted a formal separation from her when she claimed: 'she would rather sweep the corners of the streets than be his mistress, if that was his object'.
Role in Parliament
He was elected to the family constituency of Wareham in the 1831 general election, won by the Whig Party. The seat had previously been held by his brothers: John Calcraft and John Hales Calcraft. He voted for the second reading of the Grey ministry’s reintroduced reform bill. He presented the petition from Wareham for its retaining one seat, but the following day he conceded that, although the borough was prosperous and almost viable in terms of population, it could not be saved from schedule A. He voted for swearing the original Dublin election committee. He divided for the passage of the reform bill and Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion. He voted for the second reading of the revised bill, to go into committee on it. He divided against the second reading of Hobhouse’s vestry bill. He voted for Ebrington’s motion for an address calling on the William IV to appoint only ministers who would carry the reform bill unimpaired and the second reading of the Irish reform bill. He divided in the minority for Buxton’s motion for a select committee on colonial slavery, and spoke and voted to abolish flogging in the army. Arriving late at the debate on adding Corfe Castle to the reprieved constituency of Wareham, he opposed the idea because it would give the nomination to the Bankes family, local Tory rivals. His only other known votes were with government for the Russian-Dutch loan. His elder brother, with whom he differed in politics, had succeeded to the family estates after their father’s suicide in September 1831 and intended the remaining seat at Wareham for himself. In an address of 18 June 1832 Calcraft therefore declined to come forward as a Liberal at the impending general election because of his ‘apprehension of a painful family collision’. He left the House at the dissolution later that year and never sat again.
