He originally intended a career in the
Church of England, and was ordained in 1644, but his prospects were disrupted by the
English Civil War, and he turned to
medicine. He collaborated with
Thomas Willis, and it was to Bathurst that Willis dedicated his first medical publication, the
Diatribae Duae of 1659. Bathurst was active in the intellectual ferment of the time, and very well-connected. In the account given by
John Wallis of the precursor groups to the
Royal Society of London, Bathurst is mentioned as one of the
Oxford experimentalists who gathered from 1648–9. Also in that group were Willis,
William Petty and
Seth Ward. The group expanded in the 1650s when it gathered around
John Wilkins of
Wadham College, close however to
Oliver Cromwell, and then included also
Jonathan Goddard,
Thomas Millington,
Laurence Rooke, and
Christopher Wren. Later
Robert Boyle joined. Bathurst belonged also to the overlapping circle of physicians following the tradition of
William Harvey, and which included again Willis,
George Ent,
Walter Charleton,
Nathaniel Highmore, and
Charles Scarburgh; these were
royalists who had attended
Charles I of England. In the celebrated case of
Anne Greene, who survived a hanging, the physicians intending to dissect the cadaver were Bathurst, Petty, Willis, and
Henry Clerke. He worked in practical medicine under the physician
Daniel Whistler (1619–1684). This was during the
First Anglo-Dutch War of 1652 to 1654, when Whistler was in charge of wounded naval personnel. ==Later life==