BANKS, John (1627-99), of Leadenhall Street, London, and Aylesford, Kent.

Originally from Lancashire, the Banks family became established as woollen drapers in London, before acquiring property in Maidstone in the late sixteenth century. Banks’s grandfather, and namesake, married into the Kent gentry in 1596, and was subsequently granted his own coat of arms.27Vis. London, i. 42. He served as mayor of Maidstone in 1622, and left property in both London and Kent at his death in 1642.28Recs. Maidstone, 273; PROB11/190/193. He had also acquired a share in the Irish Adventure, which his son Caleb claimed in the 1650s.29CSP Ire. Adv. pp. 312, 313; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 405, 514, 529. Long before then, however, Caleb had established himself as a leading member of the mercantile elite in Maidstone. He served as mayor on three occasions (1633, 1644, 1656), sat on the Kent commission of the peace, and was a member of the parliamentarian county committee during the 1640s.30Recs. Maidstone, 90, 101, 103, 109, 116, 121, 134, 139, 140, 273; CSP Ire. Adv. p. 335; Coleman, Sir John Banks, 3.

Despite the family’s relative wealth, John Banks did not receive a university or inns of court education, but followed his father into commerce.31Vis. Kent, 7. Admitted as a freeman of Maidstone as a draper in 1644, during the mayoralty of his father, Banks appears to have pursued his business interests during the remainder of the decade, rather than taking part in public and political life.32Cent. Kent Stud. Md/ACm1/3, f. 4v. From 1650, however, he emerged as a navy victualler, as part of a syndicate which included another Maidstone merchant, William Beale, as well as Dennis Gauden, although their activity extended to the supply of the Cromwellian army in Ireland.33C8/134/74; C10/65/22; Coleman, Sir John Banks, 10-11; CSP Dom. p. 548; 1651-2, p. 600. This syndicate, which survived until 1655, was evidently profitable, although the loss of Banks’s accounts for the first half of the 1650s prevents an accurate assessment of his wealth during this period.34Coleman, Sir John Banks, 11. Gauden remained a business colleague for the remainder of the decade, as did admiralty commissioners like Edward Salmon*.35Cent. Kent Stud. U234/A1, p. 19; U234/A2, f. 3; U234/B2, unfol.

Although it was Banks’s status within his native county which ensured his return to Parliament as MP for Maidstone in 1654, his primary motivation may have been a desire to indemnify himself against creditors, clients, and business associates. He certainly made little recorded impression on the proceedings, other than securing nomination to the privileges committee.36CJ vii. 373b. That his mercantile interests remained his pre-eminent concern is evident from his emergence as a substantial investor in commercial adventures, alongside one of London’s leading merchants, John Dethick, who had served as sheriff in 1650 and who would become mayor in 1655. Banks married Dethick’s daughter in November 1654, after which he appears to have run his business affairs from Dethick’s house in St Mary Axe, London.37Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B2, unfol. Thereafter, although Banks continued to operate as a victualler, his ventures appear increasingly to have been undertaken in association with Dethick, particularly trade with the East and West Indies, in ships which they and their partners owned.38CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 431; 1657-8, p. 146; Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1655-9, 80, 268; Cent. Kent Stud. U234/A2, ff. 3-4. From October 1657, Banks’s name began to appear regularly in the minutes of the East India Company, and he was appointed to a number of its committees.39Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1655-9, 176, 179, 200, 236, 268. The papers of one adventure to the East Indies (1655-8) reveal the frequency with which Banks attended meetings in London’s taverns and livery halls, and the connections which he forged with political grandees like Bulstrode Whitelocke*, London merchants like Robert Tichborne*, and navy commissioners like Nehemiah Bourne, all of whom were investors.40Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B1, unfol.; U234/B2, unfol.

The best documented of Bank’s trading adventures reveals the money which such schemes could generate, if not their profitability. His twelfth share of this project brought Banks over £700 when the dividends were shared among the investors in late 1659.41Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B1, unfol. His account books also reveal the extent of his dealings with the Cromwellian regime. In November 1657, for example, he recouped £2,282 of money owed to him by the navy treasurer since November 1652, and he received a further £850 for naval provisions in March 1658.42Cent. Kent Stud. U234/A1, pp. 2, 11. This may only have scratched the surface of the debt owed to him by the state, about which he appears to have regularly petitioned the admiralty commissioners during this period.43CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 477, 507. He had taken over the debts owed to the other former victuallers by December 1658, when he received a further £5,300 from the navy commissioners, although a similar sum may have remained owing.44Cent. Kent Stud. U234/A1, p. 28; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 506. Between March 1658 and August 1659, moreover, he received over £6,800 for saltpetre provided to the Tower of London.45Cent. Kent Stud. U234/A1, pp. 12, 32, 40. The turnover of his business concerns is also evident from the fact that his receipts for the period between mid-October 1658 and late March 1659 amounted to over £25,000.46Cent. Kent Stud. U234/A1, pp. 25, 28, 29, 32. Some of this came from a growing property portfolio, and from tenants like Sir Michael Livesay*, and by the late 1650s Banks’ rent receipts averaged nearly £900 per annum.47Cent. Kent Stud. U234/A1, pp. 2, 12, 19, 24, 32, 46. By November 1657 his personal estate was worth over £13,000, and this had been extended by a further £3,500 by March 1659.48Cent. Kent Stud. U234/A2, f. 1. Such wealth enabled the purchase of a sizeable estate in Kent in November 1658.49Cent. Kent Stud. U234/A1, p. 26.

It may have been a desire to protect his personal financial interests which led to Banks securing a seat at Westminster once again in the second protectorate Parliament in 1656. The extent of the state’s indebtedness to him almost certainly created short term financial difficulties, and he may thus have valued the protection from creditors which Westminster offered. There is also evidence that he was willing to exploit the perquisites of being a Member of the Commons. In March 1657, for example, he suggested to at least one business colleague that letters should be addressed to him in his capacity as an MP, ‘in regard I shall have it more conveniently’.50Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B2, unfol. Nevertheless, it is evident that Banks played a more active role in the proceedings of the second protectoral parliament. He was named to 12 committees during the first sitting, and although these tended to be related to minor matters, it is surely significant that he was included in the committees to consider a London petition on 19 December, and a petition of the Levant Company on 27 January.51CJ vii. 434a, 434b, 440b, 444a, 456a, 470b, 477b, 483a, 484a, 505b, 528b.

Unfortunately, neither Banks’s parliamentary activity nor his private papers reveal much of his political inclinations, despite the fact that his business letters usually included news of important events in London and Westminster. Banks’s business partners at this time included prominent Cromwellians like Thomas Kelsey*, but he also appears to have been involved with men far less supportive of the regime, like Lambard Godfrey*.52Cent. Kent Stud. U234/A1, pp. 6, 19, 43, 59; U234/A2, ff. 21, 57. During March 1657, he noted the ‘perfecting of the Remonstrance’, and its transformation into the Humble Petition and Advice; but he offered little opinion on the offer of the crown to Oliver Cromwell*, beyond expressing the pious concern that ‘the Lord direct him’, and he was not among those listed as voting in favour of kingship on 25 March.53Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B2, unfol.; Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 22 (E.935.5). He made little further comment on such constitutional issues, or on the adjournment of Parliament in June 1657.54Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B2, unfol. After the brief second sitting in the new year of 1658, in which Banks was named to three further committees, concerning civil registration, university colleges, and the maintenance of ministers, he offered little comment on the dissolution.55CJ vii. 581a-b; Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B2, unfol. However, the fact that he noted how Cromwell had cashiered several officers who had been ‘busy in things concerned them not in matters of the public government’ suggests a degree of support for the protector, whom he would praise after 1660.56Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B2, unfol.; Pepys’s Diary, v. 52.

Banks appears to have been happy to accept the succession of Richard Cromwell*, and welcomed evidence that although there was restlessness within the army in October 1658, ‘things are, it’s said, well reconciled’. He also hinted that the continuation of the protectorate was good for business: ‘truly it will be best for us and the other Protestant interest to agree, and not by our discords lay ourselves open to the prey of our enemies abroad and at home’.57Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B2, unfol. When Banks was again returned as MP for Maidstone in 1659, it was evidently as a supporter of the status quo. Although he appears to have played no part in proceedings, his correspondence reveals his friendship with George Downing*, and his frequent meetings with Secretary of state John Thurloe*, as well as his support for ‘a good settlement’, even if his optimism regarding the ‘fair and clear’ progress of the session was clearly misplaced.58Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B2, unfol. Yet Banks’s loyalty was not to the protectorate itself, but to a relatively stable government that would allow him to make money unhindered. During the political turmoil of the weeks after the dissolution of Cromwell’s Parliament, Banks expressed his confidence that ‘all is again well disposed’ (29 Apr. 1659), and that ‘things here are very quiet in the present state of affairs’ (10 May). His correspondence with Charles Whalley* later in the year indicates that he was not unduly worried by the army’s interruption of the Rump in October, or by the appointment of a ‘new council’ chosen ‘by a committee of the chief officers’ (22 Oct.).59Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B2, unfol. No doubt his personal financial stake in the interregnum regimes, as well as his desire for assistance in seeking reparations from the Dutch for losses incurred during the 1650s, coloured his political judgment, while his optimism represented the triumph of hope over expectation.60Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1655-9, 332; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 391; 1659-60, pp. 477, 587.

Banks also faced the political upheaval of 1660 with equanimity. Noting the prospect of new elections, and the likely readmission of the secluded Members in early January, he commented that ‘things do appear with a better face’.61Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B3, unfol. His need to undertake business with committees at Westminster required him to accommodate the changes of regime, and he appears to have been more concerned by the uncertainty over the threat posed by John Lambert*, and with the delays caused by the need to wait for General George Monck’s* arrival from Scotland.62Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B3, unfol. Indeed, like many merchants, Banks’s overriding desire was for peace and harmony. Although he advised one friend against supporting a royalist petition in late January, on the understanding that Monck was ‘the servant of this Rump’, and that the petitioners would ‘find cold comfort’, he reacted to the readmission of the secluded Members and to news of a new Parliament with the hope that ‘it may be for good to the divided nation’.63Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B3, unfol. Similarly, he was prepared to welcome the imminent return of Charles Stuart in May 1660, in the hope that the country could reach a ‘desired settlement, after all the divisions’.64Cent. Kent Stud. U234/B3, unfol.

Following the Restoration, Banks continued to develop his mercantile empire, and by the time that he assumed the position as governor of the East India Company in 1672 his personal wealth was in excess of £100,000.65Cent. Kent Stud. U234/A2, f. 1. Doubtless one of the richest individuals in the country, Banks also developed a strong and profitably relationship with the crown, as a leading moneylender. Although not elected to either the Convention or the Cavalier Parliament, he sat regularly as a tory from 1678 until his death in 1699. Having survived his sons, including Caleb†, who sat for Kent constituencies between 1685 and 1696, Banks’s substantial estate passed to his daughter Elizabeth, and thence to her husband, Heneage Finch†, sometime solicitor-general under Charles II, and future earl of Aylesford. Banks was buried at Aylesford, where he requested that a monument should be erected at a cost of £400.66HP Commons 1660-1690; Pepys’s Diary, ix. 399; PROB11/452/437.