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18 Sir Joseph Banks at Revesbythem to his nose and face to the consternation no doubt of his sister but gaining the respect of boysfrom the servants’ hall and the village. With these boys he first discovered the pleasures of fishing andthe attractions of cricket on the village green, then an increasingly popular pastime. There were alwayshorses in the stables and learning to ride was a natural step for a growing boy and he became a competenthorseman. He also learnt how to swim, fish and later became a good shot. Perhaps it was also in thoseyears before formal schooling that he first played with a bow and arrow; certainly both he and his sisterlater became quite skilled at archery. In 1749 William had the Long Pond dug north of the house, no doubt the source of toads, (later calledKangaroo Pond), creating a mound on the north side behind on which elm trees were planted. The sameyear a menagerie was created in the Park; what kind of animals he kept we don’t know, but was it one ofthe triggers in his son’s interest in the natural world (he was then six). He also planned the gardens andten years later (1759) William established an orangery. No doubt the three tumuli alongside the road tothe south intrigued Joseph, and he doubtless explored the Cistercian Abbey site to the south of Revesbyvillage. When Joseph was about five, his father engaged 45-year old Revd Henry Shepherd, Rector of Marehamle Fen and Moorby, as a private tutor as he had been to William eighteen years before. The presentation tothese livings was the gift of the Bishop of Carlisle who was lord of the manor of Horncastle where Joseph’sfather had established a fair as his lessee. The Bishop, Dr Charles Lyttleton, was a noted antiquarian andamong Joseph’s supporters when he was nominated as a Fellow of the Royal Society some fifteen years orso later. Probably Joseph travelled in the chaise with his father and saw the Queen Elizabeth’s GrammarSchool where he had attended. That however was not to be for Joseph. His father no doubt thoughthe could afford something better, and so in April 1752, aged nine, he was packed off to the boardingpreparatory school at Harrow where he was not far from the London home of his uncle, Robert Banks-Hodgkinson. Maybe he spent holidays with his aunt Arabella by the Thames in Chelsea, but as a scholarhe made little progress. His independent spirit missed the broad acres of Lincolnshire; he was active and‘much given to play’, but book learning was not to his liking. He was already something of a maverick. Tall for his age, strong and brave, he made friends easily among his peers (and probably spoke with aLincolnshire accent). It was when on holiday at Chelsea when he made friends with the older (by 25 years)Earl of Sandwich who lived nearby and had estates in Lincolnshire. They fished the Thames from duskto dawn in a large comfortable punt, with a little bell which told them when they had a catch. With plentyto eat and drink, a night’s fishing laid the foundations of a life-long friendship. Did Joseph have an early interest in music or was it a writing exercise when at Harrow? This verse waswritten by him on 12 December 1753: Musick’s Charm. Musick the fiercest Grief can charm, And Fate’s severest Rage disarm: Musick can soften Pain to Ease, And make Dispair & Madness please Our Joys below it can improve, And antedote the Bliss above. He was at home at Revesby for the last two weeks of November 1753, but in September 1756 he wasremoved from Harrow to Eton, spending July and August at Revesby before starting at Eton in Octoberand November. Had father made progress with Richard Fydell MP of Boston (who had purchased FydellHouse in 1733) and others with their plans to tame the meandering River Witham and how would itaffect the fishing? Spalding engineer John Grundy had produced levels, reports, plans and estimates, butthe interested parties could not agree. Leading promoter Richard Fydell had travelled to confer with theimmobilised William who had an interest through the tenants of farms at Revesby, Tumby, Mareham onthe Hill and Horncastle who had stock on the West and Wildmore Fens. Joseph would be back in theclassroom by the time the Lincoln Longwools, bred on the sheepwalks of the chalk Wolds to the north,were brought off the fens before the winter frosts. Parts of the woodlands at Tumby and Fulsby had onlyrecently been felled and replanted under the 23-year rotation were only a short ride away. Or there was achance to see the Wildmore Tit ponies rounded up for sale at the Great August Horse Fair at Horncastleand destined for the Banks-Hodgkinson lead mines in Derbyshire.

45Fydell House Fydell House, Boston. Chapter 5 1786 – 1790THE annual visit to Revesby in 1786 had started from Spring Grove via Grimsthorpe where they stayed two days and dined with 20 people. Then it was on to Lincoln for the Races, which were held on the Carholme (West Common), in the first week of September staying at the house ofthe Dean of Lincoln (Dr Richard Kaye, a botanising friend), where Dorothea danced three nights – two inthe County Rooms and one in the City Rooms. Sir Joseph rode over to Wollaton Hall, Nottingham fortwo days. On 15 and 16 September there was a fishing party on the River Witham, with ample catches ofperch, pike and eels, ‘since when the house had plenty of company’. On 12 October ‘we go to a Ball whichis to be attended by most families of the county, for the encouragement of the Woollen Manufacture; wewere all dress’d in a Stuff of the same colour. If we meet any of our acquaintance, think we may like it verywell’. They danced from 9 o’clock to 6 am. So wrote Lady Dorothea in 1786 to her friend Miss Mary Heber of Weston, a lady of education, thefirst of regular letters over the next dozen years. From these we learn much about Sir Joseph’s life atRevesby. The annual fishing party, started in 1784 and running until 1796, was a good example of thetime when Sir Joseph could relax. It took place from Wednesday to Saturday in the week before the racesin Lincoln. On 22 September 1784 Sir Joseph had written to Blagden: ‘Fishing and shooting occupy here theleisure I have from the necessary business which brings me down. The first is very successful but the latteras unfortunately birds as scarce as I ever them to have been. An equinoxtial night raining and blowing,with the cart loading for a grand fishing tomorrow; all the neighbourhood is expected to assist’. On the Wednesday morning at about half-past-ten Sir Joseph, his wife and sister set off from RevesbyAbbey for the hour’s drive to two big boats waiting at Dogdyke. One was 48 feet long and the other 52 feetlong with a deck 11 feet wide; this was for Sir Joseph and his guests. Both were covered by an awning underwhich Sir Joseph reckoned about thirty people could dine. Servants with a seine net some 70 yards longand 20 feet deep, dragged by two horses one on each bank, had already started to fish. Lunch was held atCoppin Syke (just above Langrick) or Anton’s Gowt. The net was hauled about ten times a day, landinga total of 300 – 400 pounds of fish, which were then classified, weighed and a record made. Sir Josephhimself noted in a letter to Sir William Hamilton, on 30 September 1788 that ‘I am much occupied withsheep and wool that I can seldom shoot’ but that 10 miles of freshwater were fished and in four days caught17 cwt of fish ‘always 20 or 30 masters and mistresses with servants and attendants on the fish we caught,dressed on fires made on the bank, and when we were done we had not a pound of fish left’.

1794 – 1795 – 1796 73 It was reckoned that Lincolnshire north of Boston lay under water for months together: Twixt Frith Bank and the Wold side bound, I question one dry inch of ground, From Lincoln all the way to Boston, Had all the tops of banks been one, I really think they all would not Have made a twenty acre spot. The common right holders on the high lands adjoining West and Wildmore Fens depasture theirsheep on the drier parts during the summer. In 1793 it was estimated that 40,000 sheep had rotted onWest and Wildmore Fens and that ‘the number stole is incredible, and are taken off in whole flocks as sowild a country (whole acres being covered with thistles and nettles four feet high and more) nurses up arace of people as wild as the fen’, according to Arthur Young. It was said that there were not two houses inthe whole parish of Dogdyke communicable with each other for whole winters except by boat, this beingthe only means by which the fen-slodgers could get to church. On 30 May 1795 Walls (to Sir Joseph)suggested that farmers on the coast fear landings from smugglers and pirate vessels and that intrudersmight be assisted by disaffected farm labourers.

The Drainage and Division of West and Wildmore Fens 103 Meanwhile Sir Joseph had written in July to Lord Colchester: ‘Rennie is the man I have employedin the Lincolnshire drainage, and he has made his plans much to the satisfaction of the proprietors’.At Spring Grove Sir Joseph had an attack of gout. Lady Dorothea’s letter to Miss Heber of 14 August1801 said that ‘it came the last week of July and was very troublesome for about twelve days. With somedifficulty he got down the stairs during that time, and it’s now about gone and I feel comfortable in theidea that it certainly lessens, for he never before has had it without being confined to his bedchamber, butI was for some days fidgetty’. Sir Joseph and his ladies left Spring Grove for Soho Square and three dayslater set out for Derbyshire (Overton Hall) for ten or twelve days. From thence they planned to visit ‘afriend or two’ in Nottinghamshire on the way to Lincoln Races on 9 September. ‘As soon as they are overwe shall go on to Revesby’. In the third week of August, Sir Joseph had a letter from Robert Paddison of Louth, informing himof the new proposed Louth-Grimsby turnpike. As Sir Joseph owns much land on or near the route,his approval of the scheme ‘will materially promote it’. The necessary meetings, surveys and legislativepowers would be immediately put in hand. Sir Joseph finished up by putting money into the turnpike. They left Derbyshire on 6 September and spent three days in Nottinghamshire (with Sir RichardSutton), and three days at the Races, made a visit on their way home from Lincoln, and ‘have had companyhere’. When in Lincoln Sir Joseph had chaired a County Meeting on 10 September (adjourned to 11th)which included Charles Chaplin, Richard Ellison, Charles Massingberd plus William Marshall, BenjaminBromhead and Revd John Ridghill. Sir Joseph was asked to investigate the case of Mary Evison, a convictsent for transportation but had been sent back to Lincoln first from Newgate and then from Portsmouth. Sir Joseph was away for a week when Lady Dorothea wrote on 27 September. He had a county meetingand a navigation meeting to attend, to visit Grimsby Harbour and the Isle of Axholme, riding 20 milesone day ‘and was none the worse for it’. Clearly he was not suffering from gout, and the weather was good.‘He has often talked of and long been wishing for part of this expedition’, wrote Lady Dorothea. Whilehe was away she had ‘much amusement in rummaging amongst some old hoards of china and found somethings I did not know I possessed and would look pretty for my dairy’ (at Spring Grove). The visit to Grimsby was to see the admittance of merchant ships to the Haven Company’s dock. Builtunder the Act of 1796 ‘for widening, deepening, enlarging, altering and improving the haven and port ofGrimsby’, amended in 1799 to divert the River Freshney into the Haven, and with an entrance lock, it wasdesigned by Sir Joseph’s friend John Rennie. Another friend known to him, apart from Grimsby people,was William Lumb of Lincoln who had designed George Tennyson’s Grimsby warehouses. When aportion of the lock wall collapsed, Rennie insisted on hollow walls on a wider base. All this Sir Josephwould have known about before his visit. The second visit to the Isle of Axholme was through his friend William Jessop who with JosephHodgkinson were engineers for the Epworth Enclosure Act of 1795. This Act required a radicalpartitioning of the land as well as more complete drainage. This was similar to Sir Joseph’s problems withEast, West and Wildmore Fens, and hence his interest in finding out what had happened in the Isle, whichhad been completed by 1801. Sir Joseph rode his favourite ‘pony’, a redoubtable beast having to carry a 15-stone burden, accompaniedby a servant. He would probably have ridden along the turnpike from Louth to Grimsby (opened in 1802),and returned across the bridge over the River Trent (built 1787-1791), and then along the Dexthorpeturnpike. Where did he stay and where did he stop for the night during the week he was away? Sir Joseph and his ladies left Revesby for London in the first week of November 1801, but he had toreturn for a week at the end of December in order to chair a meeting at Horncastle relating particularly tocompensation for tithes where his knowledge was invaluable. This became an Act ‘for dividing, allottingin Severality; and inclosing the Parochial or General Allotments; for compensating for the tithes of eachallotment’ in June 1802. In November and December 1808 Sir Joseph heard from Joseph Harrison, a Lincolnshire landowner,who sent him extracts from the Inclosure Act for Wildmore Fen and considered that the Commissionershad acted illegally in making certain deductions for tithes. He thought that a court case was required, andasked for Sir Joseph’s consent. This was followed by a long letter setting out the tithe deductions and theauthority claimed by the Commissioners, and suggested that a case be prepared for Counsel’s opinion,and asked Sir Joseph to join with him in having this done. Sir Joseph replied five days later, agreeing that

116 Sir Joseph Banks at Revesby The numerous, expensive, and extensive drains that are made and making, the Chairman must acknowledge, cannot have a due supply of water. You will ask, how then are they to be kept in a proper state for drainage? There is a fund for a perpetual job. Exclusive of 1/- per acre, charged by the Witham Act, 1/- per acre will be payable from ALL THE FENS (when inclosed) and the contiguous low lands, to go in aid of keeping in repair superfluous drains. Calculate, Gentlemen, the annual amount and you will be stricken with the enormity of the sum entailed upon your property. If the Chairman had only directed a fair annual account, if he had properly called public meetings £200,000 of the Commoners’ money would have been saved, and all the Fens (at the latest) would have been in a state of cultivation at Lady Day 1807. By adding the loss of £200,000 to the loss from the Fens not being in a state of cultivation at Lady Day 1807, it will be difficult to estimate THE INJURY THE COMMONERS AND THE COUNTRY have sustained. I am, Gentlemen, with real regard to your true interest Your most humble Servant A COMMONER In 1810 and 1811, Walls was writing at length about the question of chapels and also the problem ofextra-parochial lands. The Special Commissioners were required to allot lands for chapels for divineworship ‘according to the law ecclesiastical of the realm’; lands had been allotted but no chapels were builtuntil 1816: St Peter, Wildmore and St Paul, Carrington. It took the amending Act of 1818, because ofincreasing population, before the East Fen chapels were built: St Peter, Midville (1819 by Jeptha Pacey)and St Paul, Eastville (1840 by J C Carter). What, it seems, had not been realised was that the landssold were extra-parochial and thus, according to Walls, ‘a place of refuge for all disorderly persons – forvagrants, cheats, whores and thieves – living by plunder, terrifying the inhabitants and destroying thepeace and security of the whole neighbourhood’. In another letter he specifically takes Sir Joseph to taskfor not ensuring the parochialising of all the fens in the first Acts. To the Commoners in the Soke of Bolingbroke, having rights in the East and West Fens. Gentlemen, When a Bill to be submitted to the present session of Parliament (in which you are highly interested) was proposed by the Chairman, Sir Joseph Banks, in a way that no one could reconcile to the first principals of English Legislature – a regard to what is due to yourselves and to your posterity, occasioned a meeting to be called of the Commoners in the Soke of Bolingbroke – at that meeting, there could be, but one opinion. The Chairman knows that the original Bill at Boston was consented to on the terms AND ON THE TERMS ONLY “that there should be not one acre of extra parochial land”: and when the Bill passed into Law how will the Chairman reconcile it to a fair dealing, that a short explicit clause to that effect was not to be found in the Act of Parliament: and after some years that he should produce at intervals two other Bills for parochialising A PART ONLY of these fens. When the Chairman tells his friends he intends to parochialise these fens it would be kind in them to remind him “that deeds NOT WORDS indicate the intentions of man”. To avert the dreadful evil of having extra parochial land in the east and west fens was the only object of the meeting at Spilsby: for had it been your wish to stop the progress of the Chairman’s Bill, not anything would have been more easy. But, Gentlemen, to avoid the semblance of any such intention, a few days after the meeting at Spilsby the following proposal was left with Mr Tunnard the Solicitor – “that if a clause was inserted in this Bill which would go to parochialise the whole of the east and west fens; or if another Bill to that purport was now brought forward, your petitioners would join hand and heart in support of so desirable an end”. At the request of Mr Chaplin, whose aid you delegated me to solicit, the same proposal was made to the Chairman Sir Joseph Banks.

142 Sir Joseph Banks at Revesby When at Revesby Sir Joseph received a letter (6 October) from Revd John Fretwell, Vicar of Raithby,informing him about the cultivation of lingberries and cranberries, that he had written down at Spilsby fromdictation by Mr and Mrs Dickinson. Also that a man from Halton Holegate had brought to him a stag’shorn found in the fen, which he desires to show to Sir Joseph. Perhaps he took it to Revesby to show him. Whilst at Revesby he had received a long letter of appreciation from Magnus Stephenson, Chief Justiceof Iceland (8 August) in respect of all the work Sir Joseph had done over the years. From February 1813 Sir Joseph was confined upstairs at Soho Square, with his right hand so crippledby gout he was barely able to hold his pen. He convalesced at Spring Grove from June to October whenhe was wheeled about the garden. He still used his ‘favourite remedy’, but all his country travels werecancelled, including Lincolnshire or to visit London. Since 1813 he had swelling of the legs and was‘obliged to keep them bandaged’. He wrote that ‘I fill up the abundant portion of leisure time which fellto the lot of the writer, when his legs became by excess of gout of little use to him, and to make time passpleasantly on, by due admixture of writing with his reading’. By October ‘I am able to sit in my chairresting my feet on the ground for some hours in the day’. When writing from Spring Grove in June 1813, and advising Sir William Hooker to go on a journey toJava, Sir Joseph’s advice was that he should submit himself to some sacrifice and adventure in preferenceto a life of ease. Had he (Sir Joseph) listened to the advice of friends he would not have undertaken hisvoyages. ‘I should have been now a quiet country gentleman ignorant of a number of matters I am nowacquainted with’. On 23 August 1814 he wrote to John Lloyd (of Denbigh) from Soho Square to thank him for thepresent of grouse, there being a scarcity of birds at Revesby due to last winter’s snow. He said that hishealth was better since taking magnesia. Was he taking this as well as Husson’s? During 1814 Sir Josephsuffered from intermittent gout in one arm and leg to ‘render my loins so sore I could not turn in bedwithout exquisite pain’. He flew to his faithful remedy again ‘which I have taken more than four years andam now fatter and of better liking than when I was better’. In August he wrote that ‘I fear it is probable that I shall be obliged to spend the greater part of my futurelife in a prostrate posture. The use of Husson’s medicine has protracted my life to a period which goutypersons seldom attain’. Sir Joseph felt fit enough to visit Revesby from mid-September and for the wholeof October. The journey took three or four days to enable him to rest more frequently. He made a pointof attending the Revesby Fair in his coach. Whether at Spring Grove in 1813 or at Revesby in 1814, hestill made all welcome, despite his infirmities and bed-ridden state, with his accustomed energy and truepoliteness. Writing from his study or the estate office at Revesby in September, to Sir George Harrison (civilservant), Sir Joseph penned a long letter about payment to collectors in the light of increased costs. Heproposed sending Allan Cunningham and James Bowie, both educated at Kew Gardens, to collect plantsat the Cape of Good Hope. If the recommendations were accepted, Sir Joseph wrote instructions, settingout the purposes and destinations of missions. On 9 October he wrote to Charles Konig, a German naturalist who was employed as assistant in SirJoseph’s library and herbarium, sending his best compliments to all his excellent friends at the BritishMuseum and to say that ‘I think I am in better health now than I was when I left London’. On thesame date he wrote to Lewis Dillwyn (naturalist) discussing the merits of china porcelain, its strengthand lightness, and of its history and composition. What he knew had been learned ‘in my wife’s dairy[at Spring Grove] where a collection of China and Japan not easily to be rivalled is constantly under myobservation’. On 16 October he wrote to his friend Sir Charles Blagden (then in Paris) that ‘I am here overwhelmedwith the winding up of various improvements’. Did this refer to the completion of John Rennie’s drainageworks to which he referred later? Sir Joseph thanked him for purchasing 100 two drachm bottles ofHusson. ‘Taking it two years in daily doses, it seemed to do its duty and I had a heavy fit of gout. I wasadvised only to take it when relapses make it advisable. The first intervals between attacks was 60 daysor more, but now 14 to 16 days, but the medicine acts as powerfully as ever, and the restoration of healthseven or eight days is complete’. He then went on to say that ‘the proprietor of the medicine can possiblygive me a better mode of proceeding, as I now stand in danger of a new attack, my two years being nearlyat its end’.