Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/126

 sophical Transactions.’ In one of his expeditions in Virginia he fell from the rocks and was killed (about 1692). His notes and papers were sent to Compton; his dried plants were acquired by Sir Hans Sloane, and are now in the British Museum.

[Phil. Trans. xvi. 667–72; Pulteney's Sketches, 55–7.]  BANISTER, RICHARD (d. 1626), an oculist, of Stamford in Lincolnshire, was educated under his near kinsman, John Banister, the surgeon [q. v.] He devoted himself especially to certain branches of surgery, such as ‘the help of hearing by the instrument, the cure of the hare-lip and the wry-neck, and diseases of the eyes.’ He studied under various persons eminent in these subjects, among whom were ‘Henry Blackborne, Robert Hall of Worcester, Master Velder of Fennie Stanton, Master Surflet of Lynn, and Master Barnabie of Peterborough.’ To complete his education he betook himself to the study of the best authors, as Rhazes, Mesne, Fernelius, Vesalius, &c.

Banister then established himself in Stamford, and acquired considerable reputation as an oculist. He was in request in all the large towns round about, and was even sent for to London. He appears to have performed numerous operations for cataract, and to have cured twenty-four blind persons at Norwich, of which he obtained a certificate from the mayor and aldermen.

Banister published in 1622 a second edition of a ‘Treatise of One Hundred and Thirteen Diseases of the Eyes and Eyelids, with some profitable additions of certain principles and experiments, by Richard Banister, oculist and practitioner in physic.’ It is a translation from the French of Jacques Guillemeau, made by one A. H., and at its first publication dedicated to the elder Banister. Guillemeau was a distinguished surgeon at the courts of Charles IX, Henry III, and Henry IV of France, and his work, ‘Traité des Maladies de l'Œil,’ was published at Paris in 1585, and at Lyons in 1610, and was translated both into Flemish and into German. The English translation by A. H. having become out of print, a second edition was published in 1622 by Richard Banister, together with an ‘appendant part’ called ‘Cervisia Medicata, Purging Ale, with divers aphorisms and principles.’ The work received the name of Banister's Breviary of the Eyes. In this treatise he names the best oculists for the last fifty or sixty years, not university graduates. Banister was buried at St. Mary's, Stamford, Lincolnshire, 7 April 1626. His wife Anne was buried there 16 April 1624.

[Wood's Athenæ (Bliss), i. 563; Hutchinson's Biographia Medica; Banister's Treatise, as above.]  BANISTER, WILLIAM (d. 1721), judge, was a student of the Middle Temple, and received the coif in 1706. For a few years he was one of the judges of South Wales, and through the friendship of Lord Chancellor Harcourt was promoted in June 1713 to be a baron of the exchequer, when he was knighted. On the accession of George I, Lord Chancellor Cowper, in his proposals for reforming the judicial staff, advised the removal of Banister as being ‘a man not at all qualified for the place’ ( Lives of the Lord Chancellors, iv. 350), and on 14 Oct. 1714 he was accordingly removed ( Reports, 1261, 1318). His public career and his private life appear to have been equally devoid of general interest. Turk Dean in Gloucestershire ‘descended to him from his ancestors,’ and he possessed ‘a great estate in this and other places’ ( Gloucestershire, 787). He died at Turk Dean on 21 Jan. 1720–1, and was buried in the parish church, where there is a memorial to him (Hist. Reg. 1721, Chron. Diary, p. 6).

[Foss's Judges of England, and works cited above.]  BANKE, RICHARD (fl. 1410), judge, was appointed a baron of the exchequer by the continual council in 1410, during the virtual interregnum caused by the mental and physical decay of Henry IV, and re-appointed by Henry V in 1414. He married Margaret, daughter of William de Rivere. The date of his death is altogether uncertain, there being nothing to indicate who succeeded him on the bench. He was interred in the priory of St. Bartholomew, London, on the site of which St. Bartholomew's Hospital now stands, as was also his wife. Stow, to whom we are indebted for the record of this fact, spells his name Vancke and his wife's maiden name Rivar.

[Dugdale's Chron. Ser. 57; Stow's Survey of London, ed. Strype, i. 715.]  BANKES, GEORGE (1788–1856), the last of the cursitor barons of the exchequer—the office being abolished on his death in 1856—was the third son of Henry Bankes [q. v.], of Kingston Hall, Dorsetshire, who represented Corfe Castle for nearly fifty years, and of Frances, daughter of Wm. Woodley, governor of the Leeward Islands. He was a lineal descendant of Sir John Bankes [q. v.], chief justice of the common pleas in the reign of Charles I. Bankes was