BANKWELL, BAKWELL, BACQWELL, or BANQUELLE, JOHN de (d. 1308), judge, was appointed in 1297 to travel the forests in Essex, Huntingdon, Northampton, Rutland, Surrey, and Sussex, for the purpose of enforcing the observance of the forest laws of Henry m, and in 1299 was made a justice itinerant for Kent, and a baron of the exchequer in 1307. We find him summoned to attend the king's coronation, and parliament in 1308. In this year he died, and his widow, Cicely, was relieved from the payment of four marks, at which her property had been assessed for taxation, by favour of the king. He had landed property at Lee and elsewhere in Kent, which descended, according to the Kentish custom of gavelkind, to his two sons Thomas and William.
[Parl. Writs, ii. div. ii. pt. i. 17, 18, pt. ii. 5; Madox's Hist. of the Exch. ii. 230; Hasted's Kent, i. 64, 92; Dugdale's Chron. Ser. 33, 34.]