Saturday, the second day of July, in the year of our Lord, 1644, will be a day long remembered by the men and women committed to ending the reign of a tyrannical King. For on this day, the forces of Charles the First were crushed on the bloody fields of Marston Moor.
The calamitous defeat forces the increasingly desperate Royalists to intensify their attempts to bring about the immediate demise of their Parliamentarian enemies. This includes devising an audacious plan to assassinate the man they believe is key to the war’s outcome.
With the plotters ready to strike, Francis Hacker, one of Parliament’s most loyal soldiers, becomes aware of the conspiracy. With little time to act, he does everything in his power to frustrate their plans. But, alas, things start to unravel when brave Hacker finds himself pitted against a ruthless and cunning mercenary, a man who will resort to anything to achieve a ‘kill’.
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GUEST POST
I have often heard it said that everyone has at least one book in them. And this may be true – but I know very few people who have tested out the theory.
A lack of confidence, a lack of time, or simply a lack of willpower, often results in so many of us not taking up the writing challenge.
But if you do have that inner burning desire, one that keeps prodding and poking you at the most inconvenient of times, then there is some good news to share: writing a novel is far easier than it might seem!
Believe me, I know; I have recently published my second novel – and have started work on my third!
The truth is, I had got it all wrong. I thought you needed to have the perfect plot, chapter structure and process all lined up and ready to go. How little I knew. The reality is I needed none of these things. A germ of an idea is all that was required, a bit of a plan (understanding where you are going to go with the opening three or four chapters), and a handful of believable characters.
Of course, because I write historical fiction, there was also the small matter of identifying the period I wanted to write about. But that was an easy choice: I love the seventeenth century, particularly the 20-year spell between 1640 and 1660 – when Britain was gripped by a brutal civil war and the monarchy come to an abrupt and dramatic end for eleven years.
In real terms, my choice was a very easy one.
Difficulties did arise when trying to identify some of the characters I would write about. But, once I got going, that was also a relative walk in the park.
I had devised a main character profile one day when there was no sport on television, my wife and the children were out shopping, and the cat had also abandoned me! Unsurprisingly, perhaps, given the setting of my book, I opted for a stoic male whose allegiance was to Parliament. He was a man of faith (as were most people at the time), a mid-ranked army officer, and an individual who was in conflict with his two brothers – members of his own bloodline who had chosen to support the cause of King Charles the First.
When I had finished making my notes, I looked at what I had written. At first it seemed implausible and unrealistic, a million miles away from what I perceived the period to be like. How wrong I would turn out to be.
Several weeks after I had drawn up the details of my main character, I visited the National Civil War Museum. It is not sited in London, but in Newark in the East Midlands. I live in Leicestershire, just a 40-minute car journey from the historic town.
I remember walking into the museum and sitting down to watch a video about the civil war. It told the story of a family who lived in the Midlands. They had been torn apart by the conflict. Two of the sons had sided with the King; a third had become an officer in the Parliamentary army. They were a devoutly religious family, yet they couldn’t agree on some of the most fundamental things. So, the brothers went their separate ways and by 1643 were firing leaden musket shot and cannon balls at each other across the River Trent. Literally.
As you can imagine, I the video left me speechless: somehow, completely by chance, I had found my dynamic main character!
His name is Francis Hacker.
In 1643 (when the Hacker Chronicles begin), Francis was in his mid-20s; he was married to an incredible woman (Isabel) six years his elder; he and his two brothers lived within ten miles of each other, and in May of that year, one of these brothers was killed in a skirmish close to Francis’s home, most probably shot by a member of the Militia my main character commanded.
From this moment, everything seemed to happen in a bit of a blur.
I started to use the Internet to research my man. What I discovered confirmed I had made the right choice, for Francis was a man who was right at the heart of the English Civil Wars. He became close friend and confidante of Oliver Cromwell; he was twice offered the opportunity to swap sides and take command of his own regiment in the King’s army, only to scornfully decline the chance to swap sides; and he was also one of the 59 men to sign the death warrant of Charles the First in 1649.
The more I dug into the man and his exploits, the more I discovered.
But my biggest ‘find’ – the one that convinced me I had a potentially great story to tell – was the discovery that Francis’s story had largely been forgotten. Although he was a great military leader, he was a poor orator, something of an introvert. That meant the other regicides made far more noise than he did. And because their voices were louder, historians have had a far easier job piecing their lives together and telling their respective stories.
With Francis Hacker in the bag and supporting characters like Rowland and Isabel also identified, I began the exercise of finding the rest of the supporting cast.
In the early 1640s, Cromwell was a relatively unknown figure. He was a Colonel in Parliament’s Eastern Association Army. Some basic checks on my part revealed the early years of the Cromwell story is not well known. And as Francis and Oliver became good friends (a fact), this was an area I needed to focus on. And I did.
But what I really needed to find was a great anti-hero.
Some might say I have already done this in Francis, as stories about this period tend to paint the Parliamentary side as the bad guys, and the cavaliers as the defeated goodies! But, as Redemption demonstrates, I have a different perspective!
What I needed was a prominent Royalist, who could convincingly be portrayed as an individual with purely selfish intent, perhaps even an evildoer.
In this regard, I created Gustav Holck – a amalgam of a character drawn from a couple of real men who fought on the fields of Europe in what became known as the Thirty Years War.
If Holck were alive today, he would be diagnosed as a murderous psychopath. In the seventeenth-century, at a time of the greatest bloodshed Britain has ever known (greater than both World Wars), Holck was a useful man to have on your side, his thirst for killing a desirable attribute!
Although the character of Holck is a figment of my fertile imagination, his development came about by researching some of the mercenaries who fought in the wars for both sides. They were not in England for noble reasons. They were here for personal gain and social advancement. And many of them were willing to do whatever it took to get noticed!
It’s fair to say that by the time I had finished all my research and character development, I was hooked. And at times, I am sure it must have appeared to my wife and family that I was starting to think I was Francis Hacker (I hear this is quite common among writers)!
Thankfully, my wife is a very tolerant woman. And she needs to be – for I have three more novels to write about Francis Hacker, which are likely to take me until 2025 to complete.
Philip Yorke is an award-winning former Fleet Street journalist who has a special interest in history. His Hacker Chronicles series, to be told in five fast-paced historical fiction novels, tells the story of Parliamentarian soldier, Francis Hacker.
Redemption, the second book in the series, is set during the period 1644-46 (during the first English Civil War), when events take a significant turn in favour of Parliament.
Philip is married, and he and his wife have five children. He enjoys relaxing to classical music, reading the works of Nigel Tranter, Bernard Cornwell, Robyn Young and CJ Sansom, and supporting Hull City FC and Leicester Tigers RFC.
He lives in Leicestershire, England.
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