Banks, knighted 23 March 1781, was further awarded the Red Ribbon of the Order of the Bath by the King 1 July 1795. Steadily, Banks morphed from an adventurer into a “stay-put scientist and docile country squire” after his marriage to 20 year-old heiress Dorothea Hugessen, 15 years his junior, in 1788 the same year saw him elected President of the Royal Society, a position he held uninterrupted for over 40 years. At the age of 30, Banks was given “a kind of superintendence’ of the Kew’s Royal Botanic Gardens. There was a scandal in the press concerning a supposed mistress and child, but Banks had “a hide as thick as the crocodiles’ he had seen in the Endeavour River”.īanks developed a close friendship with King George III, nicknamed “Farmer George”, only five years older than Banks. “Banks remained the most famous naturalist in Britain” while also considered a “Lothario”. This was to be the last great adventure for Banks, who “instead of going with Phipps towards the North Pole” as planned, instead botanized with friends in Wales.
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