Apart from 'The Chronicles of Robin Hood,' Sutcliff's three previous novels, The Queen Elizabeth Story, The Armourer's House and Brother Dusty-Feet were aimed at a younger audience and set in the 16th century.

The rest of the book covers the final campaign in the West Country; Simon takes part in the July 1645 Battle of Langport, then helps capture a house at Okeham Paine held by the Royalists, where he finds himself fighting against Amias.

Rosemary Sutcliff wrote that it is a fiction based on real events; "Most history books deal with the final campaign of the civil war in a single paragraph, and the Battle of Torrington they seldom mention at all.

Most of the people I've written about really lived; Torrington Church really did blow up, with 200 Royalist prisoners and their Parliamentary Guard inside, and no one has ever known how it happened, though Chaplain Joshua Sprigg left it on record that the deed was done by 'one Watts, a desperate villain.'"

While the fact of the explosion is historically correct, other sources claim the prisoners were Parliamentary soldiers held by the Royalists (Sutcliff has it the other way round), while the actual number killed is unclear.