Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/142

Banks published the imaginary discovery of another unrecognised claim to a peerage, under the title of a 'Genealogical and Historical Account of the Earldom of Salisbury, showing the descent of the Baron Audley of Heleigh from the William Longespe, Earl of Sabsbury, son of King Henry II by the celebrated Fair Rosamond, and showing also the right of the Baron Audley to the inheritance of the same earldom.' In 1844 he published, in two parts, 'Baronia Anglica Concentrate.' He also published, without date, 'Observations on the Jus et Modus Decimandi,' an' Account of the ancient Chapel of St. Stephen's at Westminster,' and a 'Poem on the Family of Bruce.' During his later years he resided near Ripon, Yorkshire. He died at Greenwich 30 Sept. 1854.

 BANKS, WILLIAM STOTT (1820–1872), antiquary, was born at Wakefield, Yorkshire, in March 1820, of humble parentage. He received a scanty education at the Lancasterian school in that town, and at the age of eleven started life as office-boy to Mr. John Berry, a local solicitor. He was afterwards clerk in the office of Messrs. Marsden & Ianson, solicitors and clerks to the West Riding justices, and upon the dissolution of the firm in 1844 he remained with Mr. Ianson, to whom he subsequently articled himself. After the usual interval Banks was admitted an attorney in Hilary Term, 1851, and in 1853 became a partner, the firm being Messrs. Ianson & Banks. On the formation of the Wakefield Borough Commission in March 1870 he was elected clerk to the justices, an office which he retained until his death. He had, in 1865, become known as an author by the publication of his 'List of Provincial Words in use at Wakefield,' an unpretending little volume, but a model of its kind. The following year he gave to the world the first of his excellent manuals, entitled 'Walks in Yorkshire: I. In the Northwest; II. In the North-east,' which had previously appeared in weekly instalments in the columns of the 'Wakefield Free Press.' Shortly before his death he issued a companion volume, called 'Walks in Yorkshire: Wakefield and its neighbourhood.' Both works are remarkable for their completeness and happy research. Banks died at his house in Northgate, Wakefield, on the Christmas day of 1872, having returned but a few weeks from the continent, whither he had journeyed in a vain search for health.

 BANKTON, (1685–1760), Scottish judge. [See .]

 BANKWELL, BAKWELL, BACQWELL, or BANQUELLE, JOHN (d. 1308), judge, was appointed in 1297 to travel the forests in Essex, Huntingdon, Northampton, Rutland, Surrey, and Sussex, for the purpose of enforcing the observance of the forest laws of Henry m, and in 1299 was made a justice itinerant for Kent, and a baron of the exchequer in 1307. We find him summoned to attend the king's coronation, and parliament in 1308. In this year he died, and his widow, Cicely, was relieved from the payment of four marks, at which her property had been assessed for taxation, by favour of the king. He had landed property at Lee and elsewhere in Kent, which descended, according to the Kentish custom of gavelkind, to his two sons Thomas and William.

 BANKWELL, ROGER (fl. 1340), judge, perhaps of the same family as  [q. v.], was one of three commissioners entrusted with the assessment of the tallage in the counties of Nottingham and Derby in 1333, and a member of another commission directed to inquire into the circumstances connected with a fire which had recently occurred at Spondon in Derbyshire, the sufferers by which prayed temporary exemption from taxation on account of their losses. He appears as a counsel in the yearbook for 1340, in 1341 was appointed to a justiceship of the king's bench, and was one of those assigned to try petitions from Gascony, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and 'other foreign parts' between the years 1341 and 1347.

 BANKYN or BANEKYNE, JOHN (fl. 1382), Augustinian friar and opponent of Wycliffe, was born in London and educated in the Augustinian monastery of that city and afterwards at Oxford, where he attained the degree of doctor of divinity. The single recorded act of his life is his presence at the provincial council of Blackfriars which condemned certain of Wycliffe's opinions in, May 1382 (Fasciculi Zisaniorum, pp. 286, 499; cf. pp. 272 sq.: ed. Shirley, Rolls Series). Bishop Bale states that Bankyn was a popular preacher and an able disputant, and that his