Editing Joseph Banks (section)

==Early life==
[[File:Joseph Banks as a boy.jpg|left|thumb|upright|A 1757 portrait of Banks with a botanical illustration, unknown artist, but attributed to [[Lemuel Francis Abbott]] or [[Johann Zoffany]]<ref name = "O'Brian"/>]]

Banks was born in [[Argyll Street]], [[Soho]], [[London]], the son of [[William Banks (barrister)|William Banks]], a wealthy [[Lincolnshire]] country [[squire]] and member of the [[House of Commons of Great Britain|House of Commons]], and his wife Sarah, daughter of William Bate.<ref name=":0" /> He was baptised at [[St James's Church, Piccadilly]], on 20 February 1743, [[Old Style and New Style dates|Old Style]].<ref>George Suttor, ed., Joseph Banks, ''Memoirs Historical and Scientific of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks'' (Parramatta: E. Mason, 1855), [https://books.google.com/books?id=8KhcAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA19 p. 19]</ref> He had a younger sister, [[Sarah Sophia Banks]], born in 1744.<ref>Hill, J.W.F. (1952) ''The Letters and Papers of the Banks Family of Revesby Abbey'', Lincoln Record Society, vol. 45, noted in Patrick O'Brian, ''Joseph Banks, A Life'', 1987 p. 16</ref>

===Education===
Banks was educated at [[Harrow School]] from the age of nine and then at [[Eton College]] from 1756; the boys with whom he attended the school included his future shipmate [[Constantine Phipps, 2nd Baron Mulgrave|Constantine Phipps]].<ref name = "O'Brian"/>

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]], but he became ill and did not return to school. In late 1760, he was enrolled as a [[Commoner (academia)|gentleman-commoner]] at the [[University of Oxford]]. At Oxford, he [[Matriculation|matriculated]] at [[Christ Church, Oxford|Christ Church]], where his studies were largely focussed on natural history rather than the classical curriculum. Determined to receive botanical instruction, he paid the [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge]] botanist [[Israel Lyons]] to deliver a series of lectures at Oxford in 1764.<ref name="ODB">Gascoigne, John (2004) "Banks, Sir Joseph, baronet (1743–1820)", in ''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'', Oxford University Press, {{doi|10.1093/ref:odnb/1300}}.</ref>

Banks left Oxford for [[Chelsea, London|Chelsea]] in December 1763. He continued to attend the university until 1764, but left that year without taking a degree.<ref name="DoSB">He was, however, awarded an honorary degree by Oxford on his return from his voyage to the South Seas, see "Banks, Sir Joseph", in ''Dictionary of Scientific Biography'', Scribner, 1970.</ref> His father had died in 1761, so when Banks reached the age of 21, he inherited the large estate of [[Revesby Abbey]], in Lincolnshire, becoming the local squire and [[magistrate]], and dividing his time between Lincolnshire and London. From his mother's house in Chelsea, he kept up his interest in science by attending the [[Chelsea Physic Garden]] of the [[Worshipful Society of Apothecaries]] and the [[British Museum]], where he met the Swedish naturalist [[Daniel Solander]]. He began to make friends among the scientific men of his day and to correspond with [[Carl Linnaeus]], whom he came to know through Solander. As Banks's influence increased, he became an adviser to [[George III of the United Kingdom|King George III]] and urged the monarch to support voyages of discovery to new lands, hoping to indulge his own interest in botany.  He became a [[Freemasonry|Freemason]] sometime before 1769.<ref>{{cite journal | url=http://www.mqmagazine.co.uk/issue-23/p-47.php | title=Specialist Lodges | author=Jackson, John | journal=MQ Magazine |date=October 2007  | issue=27 | pages=ns}}</ref>