Besides practising as a special pleader, Baynes turned his attention to politics, and like his tutor, John Jebb, became a zealous whig.
At the general election of 1784 he supported the nomination of William Wilberforce for Yorkshire, and inveighed against the late coalition of Portland and Lord North.
[2] Baynes died in London from a putrid fever, on 3 August 1787, and was buried by the side of his friend Dr. Jebb in Bunhill Fields.
He wrote (anonymously) political verses and translations from French and Greek poems; some of these were published in the European Magazine (xii.
The archæological epistle to Jeremiah Milles, on the Rowley poems was ascribed to Baynes, because it passed through his hands to the press; but he denied the authorship.