Joseph Banks , Originally a solicitor from Sheffield, he bought Revesby Abbey for £14,000 from Craven Howard. MP for Grimsby and for Totnes. Attorney of Sheffield and Scofton, Notts.. This was a cheap price. He made a lot of money, basically from property specualtion and development. He saw the potential in the fenlands. This was some years before the drainage schemes took place in the Lincolnshire fens. This may be why he bought Revesby, having been a Sheffield man. Of Scofton, 1702. Bought the estae at Holland, Lincs in 1702. Appt. Clerk of the Peace for the City of Nottibgham, 5 Jan 1706. 1710, bought Torworth Grange which he sold in 1718. In 1716, he owned a house of Fleet Street, London. In 1722, he was in treaty to buy land at Bourne. In 1726, he bought the Marsh estate at Fulcrow. He was caught up the the South Sea stock scandal. He was accused but then cleared of a practice others were doing of buying stock and selling it on before actually paying for it, thereby pocketing the profit with no actual outlay. He was a whig. Duke of Newcastle was his patron. He became an MP. In 1722 he stood, not for the first time for Grimsby and possibly holds a record for obatining one single vote. Grimsby was known to be a particularly Rotten Borough, so this vote was obtained despite his having, no doubt, offered all the normal inducements. He was returned for Totnes, having been nomiated by the Treasury. This meant he did not actually have to be voted in. He did not stand in the 1727 election. There are many references in correspondence to the suffering the horses he rode sustained. He was extremely overweight. Records, Historical and Antiquarian, of Parishes Round Hornecastle, Page 167 Describing the parish church at Revesby ".......against the west wall of this (north) aisle is a massive marble monument surmounted by a bust, probably the old monument renewed, bearing in English the inscription,
In memory of Joseph Banks, M.P. for Grimsby and Totnes, born 1681, died 1727, married Mary Hancock, and had issue Joseph, and Mary, Lady Whichcote, died 1726" NB the birth date for Joseph Banks does not agree other sources. GB/NNAF/O62322 Revesby Abbey Lincolnshire c1100-1518 : charters, deeds and leases Lincolnshire Archives Reference : RA1 NRA 6329 Revesby Abbey papers see Archivists' Report 1958/9, pp39-42; E Stanhope, Deeds and Charters relating to Revesby Abbey (Horncastle, 1889) c1140-1382 : charters, deeds and leases Burghley House Reference : 74/13;202/61-8,70-3,78-81,83,91-2;203/51-2,58,63-4,67-9,83-4,87-95,100 ;204/64 NRA 6666 Cecil see HMC Principal family and estate collections A-K, 1996 [19a] 1172-?16th cent : deed and valor of abbey's lands Lincolnshire Archives Reference : 1ANC/5B/8; 2ANC/1/19 NRA 5789 Willoughby 12th cent : inventory of charters British Library, Manuscript Collections Reference : Egerton 3058 see GRC Davis Medieval Cartularies (809) See: Lincoln Record Society Vol. 45 Letters and Papers of the banks family of Revesby Abbey 1704-60
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