Becket cook

English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences. Banks made his name on the 1766 natural-history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador. As a boy, Banks enjoyed exploring the Lincolnshire countryside and developed a keen interest in nature, history, and botany. When he was 17, he was inoculated with smallpox, becket cook he became ill and did not return to school.

In late 1760, he was enrolled as a gentleman-commoner at the University of Oxford. Banks left Oxford for Chelsea in December 1763. He continued to attend the university until 1764, but left that year without taking a degree. In 1766, Banks was elected to the Royal Society, and in the same year, at 23, he went with Phipps aboard the frigate HMS Niger to Newfoundland and Labrador with a view to studying their natural history. He made his name by publishing the first Linnean descriptions of the plants and animals of Newfoundland and Labrador.

This was the first of James Cook’s voyages of discovery in that region. Satire on Banks titled “The Botanic Macaroni”, by Matthew Darly, 1772: A macaroni was a pejorative term used for a follower of exaggerated continental fashion in the 18th century. Banks arrived back in England on 12 July 1771 and immediately became famous. He intended to go with Cook on his second voyage, which began on 13 May 1772, but difficulties arose about Banks’ scientific requirements on board Cook’s new ship, HMS Resolution. In March 1779, Banks married Dorothea Hugessen, daughter of W. Hugessen, and settled in a large house at 32 Soho Square.

It continued to be his London residence for the remainder of his life. There, he welcomed the scientists, students, and authors of his period, and many distinguished foreign visitors. Biscoe’s son, also Elisha, in 1808. The picture shows the house in 1815.

The house was substantially extended and rebuilt by later owners and is now part of West Thames College. Banks was made a baronet in 1781, three years after being elected president of the Royal Society. During much of this time, he was an informal adviser to King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, a position that was formalised in 1797. Banks’s own time in Australia, however, led to his interest in the British colonisation of that continent. He was to be the greatest proponent of settlement in New South Wales. A genus of the Proteaceae was named in his honour as Banksia. Although Banks remained uninvolved in these colonies in a hands on manner, he was, nonetheless, the general adviser to the government on all Australian matters for twenty years.