According to historian Malcolm Gaskill, in Bassett's novel Hopkins is a 50-ish Ipswich lawyer "who becomes a pikeman in a parliamentarian regiment to escape his creditors, and from there reinvents himself as 'a black-winged Attila, leaving behind him a trail of gibbet-hung corpses'."
According to historian Malcolm Gaskill, in Bassett's novel, Hopkins is a 50-year-old Ipswich lawyer who becomes a pikeman in a parliamentarian regiment to avoid creditors and then reinvents himself as "a black-winged Attila," leaving behind a trail of hanged corpses.