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 educated at Westminster School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He studied law first at Lincoln's Inn, and afterwards at the Inner Temple, and was called to the bar by the latter society in 1815. In the following year he entered parliament as his father's colleague for the family borough of Corfe Castle, which he represented in every succeeding parliament until 1823. He was again returned for Corfe Castle in 1826, and sat until 1832, when the family borough was united with that of Wareham. He does not appear to have achieved any remarkable professional success, but owing, presumably, to his family influence, he was appointed one of the bankruptcy commissioners in 1822, and cursitor baron in 1824. In 1829, under the Wellington administration, he became chief secretary of the board of control, and in the next year a junior lord of the treasury, and one of the commissioners for the affairs of India. At the general election in 1841 he again entered parliament, being returned by the county of Dorset, for which he continued to sit until his death. He supported the tory party, and strenuously opposed Sir Robert Peel's commercial reforms. During the short administration of the Earl of Derby in 1852, Bankes held the office of judge-advocate-general, and was sworn a privy councillor. On the death of his elder brother, [q. v.], in 1855, he succeeded to the family estates. He died at his residence, Old Palace Yard, Westminster, leaving issue three sons and five daughters by his wife Georgina Charlotte, only child of Admiral Sir Charles Nugent, G.C.B. Bankes was the author of 'The Story of Corfe Castle and of many who have lived there' (London, 1853), and of 'Brave Dame Mary,' a work of fiction founded on the 'Story.'

 BANKES, HENRY (1757–1834), politician and author, was born in 1757, the only surviving son of Henry Bankes, Esq., and the great-grandson of Sir [q. v.], chief justice of the common pleas in the time of Charles I. He was educated at Westminster School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1778, and M.A. in 1781. After leaving Cambridge he sat for the close borough of Corfe Castle from 1780 to 1826; in the latter year he was elected for the county of Dorset, and re-elected in the general election in the same year, but was rejected after a severe contest in 1830. In politics he was a conservative; he gave a general support to Pitt, but preserved his independence. He took an active but not a leading part in nearly every debate of his time, and closely attended to all parliamentary duties. He was a trustee of the British Museum, and acted as its organ in parliament. Bankes published 'A Civil and Constitutional History of Rome, from the Foundation to the Age of Augustus,' 2 vols. 1818. He married in 1784 Frances, daughter of William Woodward, governor of the Leeward Isles, and left a large family. His second son was [q. v.], and his third [q. v.]. His daughter married the Earl ot Falmouth. Bankes died at Tregothnan, Cornwall, 17 Dec. 1834, and was buried in Wimborne Abbey.

 BANKES, JOHN (1589–1644), chief justice of the common pleas, 'was born at Keswick, in Cumberland, of honest parents, who, perceiving him judicious and industrious, bestowed good breeding on him in Gray's Inn, in hope he should attain to preferment, wherein they were not deceived' (, Worthies, ed. Nichols, i. 237). His father was a merchant, and his mother, according to some authorities, Elizabeth, daughter of one Hassell, but according to Burke's 'Landed Gentry,' Bankes's mother was Jane Malton, and his grandmother Anne Hassel. Bankes was sent to a grammar school in his own county, and thence to Queen's College, Oxford, in 1604, at the ago of fifteen. Leaving the university without a degree he entered Gray's Inn as a law student in 1607; was called to the bar 30 Nov. 1614; became a bencher of the society in 1629, reader in 1631, and treasurer the next year (, Orig. 297, 299). Meantime he had been returned to parliament in 1628 for the borough of Morpeth, and had taken part in the debate on the question of privilege arising out of the seizure of a member's goods for tonnage by order of the king (19 Feb. 1628), on which occasion he declared that 'the king's command cannot authorise any man to break the privilege' (Parl. Hist. ii. 480). He did not, however, take much part in the politics of the day.

In 1630 the king made him attorney-general to the infant Prince Charles, then Duke of Cornwall, and on the death of Attorney-general Noy, Bankes succeeded to his place, Sept. 1634. His professional reputation was very high at this moment, for one of Lord Wentworth's correspondents mentions 'how Banks, the attorney-general, hath been commended to his majesty—that he