biography text
As a younger son Robert Banks was indentured to a Bristol merchant in October 1739. Following the deaths of his eldest brother Joseph in 1740 and his father in 1741, he succeeded his next brother William, as second surviving son under entail, to the Overton estate of his maternal grandfather William Hodgkinson.1Letters and Pprs. Banks Fam. (Lincoln Rec. Soc. xlv), pp. xxx, 181. Though a stranger to Wareham, he was seated there on petition in 1748, presumably as a government supporter, since he and John Pitt replaced two of the Prince’s followers. He did not stand again. Shortly after his wife’s death he died by his own hand, 11 Nov. 1792.2Gent. Mag. 1792, p. 1060.