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There can be few more romantic and stirring stories in the history of British landed gentry than that of Dorset’s Bankes family in the seventeenth century. Even now you can still feel the excitement of it all as you drive south on the A351 from Wareham towards Swanage and catch that first magical glimpse of the ruined Corfe Castle sitting resolutely on its mound in a gap in the Purbeck hills. Then there’s Kingston Lacy, just twelve miles to the north as the crow flies. It sits in glamorous elegance – redolent with history – just off the leafy B3082 near Wimborne Minster.

Sir John Bankes, Lord Chief Justice, bought the estates dominated by Corfe Castle in 1635. Corfe already had more than five centuries of history to its credit, having begun life just after the Norman conquest and having enjoyed a long innings as as a royal castle for the peripatetic medieval courts. At the time of Sir John’s purchase the castle was in quite a good state of repair and the Bankes family – John and his wife Mary, with children and servants – were able to make it their home.

At the same time Sir John acquired other land in the Isle of Purbeck as well as quickly buying up various other Dorset properties.

The 1630s were strange times. Loyalty to King Charles I was severely strained. A parliamentary ‘party’ who opposed the authoritarianism of the king had evolved and as the years passed there was a pervasive sense that trouble was brewing. Sir John Bankes was a committed royalist. 1642 found him away from his family in the service of the king, beleagured at Oxford. England was divided by civil war.

By the spring of 1643 almost all of Dorset had been taken by parliamentary forces. Corfe, however, was not.  And the indomitable Mary Bankes was determined to keep it that way. Because she received a tip-off that an attack was imminent she was able to barricade herself and her dependents inside the castle where they withstood a weeks-long seige, notwithstanding the destruction of the buildings in Corfe village, the homes of the villagers who were inside the castle with Lady Bankes. Eventually she conceded four small cannon and won a bit a peace and independence.

During the lull, the ever resourceful Lady Bankes – a female crisis manager centuries ahead of her time and right out of synch with the prevailing attitudes of her age –  was able to lay in some provisions and to recruit some extra manpower. Sir John visited his wife and family later in the year before rejoining the King at Oxford where he died in December 1644.

Within six months of becoming a widow Lady Bankes was once again being ambushed at Corfe by parliamentary soldiers in their round-headed helmets. The miniature of her at Kingston Lacy shows a calm intelligent, fairly plain woman gazing thoughtfully at the artist. So impressed was the parliamentarian Colonel Bingham with Mary Bankes’s courage that at the end of the final siege he allowed her to keep the seal and keys of the castle which today are on display at Kingston Lacy. The castle was demolished by act of parliament. In one sense a deadful act of vandalism; in another the creation of one of the prettiest ruins in Britain. It’s wonderfully evocative to wander round and through those ruins with their view for miles in every direction, too.

So what became of her? She went with her children to live in safety at Ruislip, near London. After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660  some money and land was returned to the Bankes family. Mary’s son, Ralph, was knighted and he moved back to Dorset. His mother died at Blandford in 1661.

Ralph, of course, needed a home: a new family seat, in fact. He commissioned Roger Pratt the architect who worked on the new Kingston Hall, near Wimborne, in the mid-1660’s. Pratt and Ralph Bankes had both travelled in Italy during the interregnum and their architectural ideas were very Italianate. It’s a very tranquil house – appropriately so considering it was built in the peacetime aftermath of a  dreadful civil war. Some of Pratt’s drawings – along with those by Brettingham and Barry for the eighteenth and nineteenth century additions – are fascinatingly displayed in the house today.

Succeeding generations of the colourful Bankes family lived at Kingston Hall, which metamorphosed as Kingston Lacy in the mid nineteenth century,  for over three hundred years  until 1981 when the reclusive Ralph Bankes died.

All the Bankes land: both the Corfe Castle and the Kingston Lacy estates were beqeathed by  Ralph Bankes to the National Trust for public enjoyment and interest. It was one of the biggest legacies to the nation of all time and for those of us who love Dorset this has made it even better. Let’s make the most of it.

Corfe Castle, Wareham BH20 5EZ  (01929) 481294 [email protected],uk

 Kingston Lacy, Wimborne Minster, BH21 4EA  (01202) 883402 [email protected]

Both open daily.  Check times on website.

A COLD START AND A HOT END

 Saintly voices drive medieval teenager to death by fire

 Rewind  604 years to 1412.  It’s a bitterly cold January night. We’re in a remote village called Domremy a few miles from Nancy in  war-torn northern France

Overview

La Belle France is at war with herself. Shooting herself in la pied, you could say. Two branches of the royal family are at loggerheads.  In one corner is The Duke of Burgundy. He wants to sell out to England which is in predatory mood, champing at the bit to get across what Shakespeare called ‘the narrow seas’ to conquer France.

On the other side are Count Bernard VII of Armagnac and his mate Duke Charles of Orleans. Duke Charles reckons that another Charles – Charles of Ponthieu, last heir of the ruling Valois dynasty, should be king, not that arrogant upstart  with the funny haircut, Henry V of England.  So of course he doesn’t see eye to eye with Burgundy.

That’s a potted version of the big picture.

Underview

Cut to the little picture at Domremy.  We’re inside a flimsy, drafty wooden hut. A humble shepherd’s wife named  Isabelle d’Arc is straining in childbirth – no anaesthetic, hospitals or mod cons in those days.  But she’s doing OK. Then hey presto, and against all the unhygienic odds Madame d’Arc pops out a bouncy daughter.

It’s a happy moment but it’s just as well that that weary Isabelle and her delighted husband Jacquescan’t foresee the trouble and heartbreak that this little miss is soon going to cause them.

Who should be king?

Before la petite Jeanne – Joan to you and me – is out of diapers King Henry Fifth of England has stormed France and wiped the floor with the  faction-ridden French army at the battle of Agincourt in 1415. He’s back two years later to grab  a lot more French territory.   By 1420 Henry has done a deal with the wily, eye-to-the-main-chance Duke of Burgundy.  Henry and his descendants will be kings of France after the death of Charles VI. Henry and Charles VI’s daughter Katherine are spliced to seal the deal.

Little Joan meanwhile is growing up fast back home in the sheep-full Barrois region of what is now Lorraine.  She’s pretty clever and a bit precocious. She knows what’s going on around her. But she doesn’t like it. So Mademoiselle d’Arc asks lots of awkward questions and soon comes to the conclusion that as far as she’s concerned there’s no contest. Charles of Ponthieu should be king.

Under the influence

By the time she’s 12 she’s under the influence of visions and voices in her head. Two early Christian martyrs, St Catherine and St Margaret, are busy telling Joan what’s what. And St Michael the Archangel – Biblically famous for commanding heaven’s armies against Satan no less – often chips in too.

‘Go see the local commander at Vaucoleurs and get him to take you to the royal court for a chat with Duke Charles,’ the saintly trio instruct her.  At age 14 in 1428 she obeys. But it’s a while before anyone takes any notice of this earnest, illiterate peasant girl and her visions.

Ninth grader commands the army

Then Charles finds himself in dire straits. He keeps losing battles, he’s got no money, he’s rapidly being driven back by his enemies. You could say he’s kind of desperate.  On her third attempt Joanie, dressed for the occasion in men’s clothes gets through – the unlikely answer to a beleaguered military leader’s prayers.  In the US today she’d be a ninth grader.

There’s something about Joanie’s tales of voices and visions that convinces Charles (well, he hasn’t much to lose) and he puts her in charge of fighting the English.  Joan d’Arc has, miraculously, a natural gift for human resource management. So she gets on and wins lots of battles, including the famous battle of Orleans in 1425. After that they called her the ‘Maid of Orleans.’

She didn’t need a life coach

Had she lived in our own times, and someone taught her to read and write, young Jeanne could obviously have knocked off a few best selling management text books – She could have thanked Saints Catherine, Margaret and Michael in the acknowledgements.

As it is, she reforms the troops by expelling the hookers from the camp. She insists that her soldiers go the church and attend confession. The men under 15 year old Miss d’Arc’s command are also required to give up swearing and to refrain from looting or harassing the civilian population.  Some little dame, this Joan.

Hot feet

But it can’t last and a hot, painful death awaits her at Rouen.  By 1429 Burgundy has more or less kicked the Armangac /Orleans faction out of the ring and is wheeling and dealing with the English right, left and centre. Joan is taken prisoner by the Burgundians and handed over to the English (in exchange for the mediaval equivalent of megabucks). They try her for heresy.

‘Your voices are demons. You are possessed by devils,’ her accusers say.  Have they forgotten that these voices always told Joan to go to church and to hang on tightly to her virginity?  Wise counsellors, saints. Poor Joan is also charged with cross – dressing and that’s heretical too.

So, still under the influence, she meets a fiery end when they tie her to a stake and light the fire beneath her on 30 May 1431. She’s nineteen and a half.

Heavenly ending

There’s a postscript to this sad tale of what listening to saints can do for you.  In 1920 on May 16, nearly five centuries after her death, Joan of Arc was canonised as a saint by Pope Benedict XV.  A case of if you can’t beat them join them?