| New research on one of Dorset’s most famous families, and their role in the outbreak of the English Civil War. |
Sir John Bankes was a Cumbrian lawyer who, like so many of his profession, made it big in the litigious early years of the seventeenth century. Rising to the lucrative role of Attorney-General in 1634, he is remembered as a steadfast supporter of King Charles I, a reputation shored up by his wife Mary and her famous defence of Corfe Castle against the Parliamentarians. Using fresh archival research, this talk looks again at the Bankes family, and finds their allegiances were much more complex than the myth. Meanwhile, the copious writings and speeches left by Sir John help us explore the fraught ideological debates of the period, and to say something about that intractable question: why was it that the English fell to blows in 1642.
| Jonathan Healey is a historian and author. He is an Associate Professor at Oxford University, where he works at the Department for Continuing Education. He is the author of The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England (2023) and The Blood in Winter: A Nation Descends, 1642 (2025) |
