Dr Jonathan Healey

The Civil War is one of the major fault lines of English history. The war caused widespread devastation, huge loss of life and an unparalleled upheaval in the political and social structures of the seventeenth-century nation. Unsurprisingly, its causes have been hotly debated down the years: were they political, King versus Parliament, religious, Anglo-Catholic versus Puritan, or social, aristocracy versus gentry, or some combination of these and other factors?

Dr Jonathan Healey’s new book, The Blood in Winter, examines the turbulent period between the opening of the Long Parliament in November 1640 and the outbreak of civil war in August 1642. He will be talking to the Sherborne Historical Society about it on 8th January. The talk is entitled ‘Betwixt the Sow’s Ear and the Silken Purse’, a reference to the humble origins and great success of Sir John Bankes, one of the principal protagonists of Healey’s story. As Bankes owned Corfe Castle, now a romantic ruin in the south of the county, his role in the descent into war brings a local dimension to a national catastrophe.

Bankes was born in Keswick in Cumberland, the son of a ‘quietly prosperous’ farmer and draper. Young John was ambitious and soon left the fells of the Lake District for Oxford and Gray’s Inn, where his career took off. He was elected to Parliament in the turbulent 1620s, where he caught the King’s eye. In the early 1630s, Bankes bought Corfe Castle and its surrounding estate. In 1634, he was appointed the King’s Attorney-General, a post of great legal and political influence but also an opportunity to make a fortune. In 1640, Bankes became Lord Chief Justice. He was now a pillar of state and destined to play a leading role in the events leading to civil war.

The Blood in Winter is a gripping account of this endlessly controversial period. Dr Healey writes history from the bottom up, so we hear much about the ordinary folk of London and the provinces as well as about the King, the nobility, the gentry, merchants and members of Parliament. The King’s botched attempt to arrest the Five Members in January 1641 is a pivotal event of the story. Inevitably, London is at the centre of the story, but Dr Healey brings the seventeenth-century city alive as a free-thinking hive of political activity through his judicious use of the stream of scabrously radical pamphlets which flowed from the city’s presses throughout the crisis.

Dr Healey writes history with an academic’s rigour leavened with a novelist’s eye for colour, detail and plot. The story rollicks along, and his talk promises to be an enthralling evening.

Richard Hopton is a historian, novelist and journalist