William John Bankes

William John Bankes (11 December 1786 – 15 April 1855) was an English politician, explorer, Egyptologist and adventurer. The second, but first surviving, son of Henry Bankes MP, he was a member of the Bankes family of Dorset and he had Sir Charles Barry recase Kingston Lacy in stone as it is today. He travelled extensively to the Near East and Egypt and made an extensive individual collection of Egyptian artefacts. His work on Egypt, though not acknowledged until the 21st century, is regarded as important. He was a good friend of Lord Byron, Samuel Rogers and Sir Charles Barry. He sat as Tory Member of Parliament (MP) for Truro in 1810, for Cambridge University from 1822 to 1826, for Marlborough (the UK parliamentary constituency that his maternal grandfather, William Woodley, for whom he was named, had held from 1780 to 1784) from 1829 to 1832, and finally for Dorset from 1832 to 1835. Early life and education William Bankes was born in 1786 to Frances Woodley (1760–1823) and Henry Bankes, MP, of Kingston Lacy and Corfe Castle in Dorset. Frances was the eldest daughter of William Woodley (MP for Great Bedwin and Marlborough), Governor and Captain-General of the Leeward Islands (1766–1771 and 1791–1793), and his wife Frances Payne of St Kitts. William's aunt was Maria Banks (Woodley) Riddell, a well-known poet, who was known to be the chief benefactor of the Scottish poet Robert Burns. William's sister Anne Frances Bankes married Edward Boscawen, 1st Earl of Falmouth in 1810. In 1841, on the death of her husband, Lady Falmouth returned to reside at Kingston Lacy. It was Lady Falmouth, in the absence of her brother, who was responsible for continuing the re-decoration of Kingston Lacy which had been commenced by her mother, Frances (Woodley) Bankes. He was the second of five children and the eldest surviving son. He was educated at Westminster School and continued his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge where he received his BA in 1808 and his MA in 1811. Lord Byron, a fellow student at Trinity, became his lifelong friend. Bankes sometimes accompanied Byron in his European tours and was described by Lord Byron as the "father of all mischief".