[1] 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.

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.

[2] 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.

[5] 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.

[8] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1663, and was made President of Trinity College in 1664, where he initiated building work to designs by Christopher Wren, a personal friend.

[citation needed] He was one of thirteen sons of George Bathurst of Theddingworth, Leicestershire and his first wife Elizabeth Villiers of Hothorpe Hall, Northamptonshire.