Belinda Copson, a Willard expert, believes this novel, set in 1479, about the friendship between Thomas Welfare, the miller's boy, and Lewis Mallory, recently come to live at Ghylls Hatch, a horsebreeding farm in the vicinity of Mantlemass, begins the Mantlemass novels. In fifteenth-century Sussex a young boy living with his grandfather, a harsh miller, dreams of having a friend his age and a horse to take him to his married sister.

Set after The War of the Roses this is the first Mantlemass story a spirited and tender love story.

In sixteenth-century England, a boy of humble birth searches for his identity while Plantagenets plot to reclaim the throne from the Tudors.

Henry VIII's quarrel with the Pope seems remote from a young Englishman's life until his uncle finds himself guardian to a mysterious silent girl who seems to remember nothing. He tries to cure her with love.

Harry Plashet quarrels with his father, Medley, and leaves Mantlemass with his family to start a new life elsewhere in England, and Piers becomes the heir.

Orphaned in 1557 by the plague and disowned by her brother's widow who claims she is not true kin to the family, fifteen-year-old Lilias begins a life-long attempt to identify her true parentage. When her mother dies suddenly, Lilias learns that she has no true place in the household in which she was brought up. She turns her back on all she has known, hiding herself as a servant in a manor house. She marries a rough ironworker, who sets his foundry in the Weald - the forest of the southeast. When he dies,Lilias takes over his work and becomes one of the richest women in the forest, It is a time when guns and gunstones can make fortunes, for England's is threatened by Spanish ships. Long before she has achieved her deepest ambitions, finding her true family, Lilias has learned to survive in a tough world and forged her own identity. She will leave her daughter, Ursula - whose happiness could be destroyed by her mother's ruthlessness - heiress to far more than riches - the amazing secret of Mantlemass, which is already generations old.

Roger and Humfrey Jolland and their kinfolk, the Medleys, are faced with the Spanish Armada. As the Spanish Armada sails to England, Humfrey and Roger Jolland are the guests of their kinsmen, the Medleys of Mantlemass. Humfrey, bold and thoughtless, rides off secretly, hoping to see a great battle. He does not return, but Roger - a strange boy, not strong but possessing a "seeing eye" - is convinced that his brother is not dead. Roger is left at Mantlemass to be lovingly cared for by his cousin, Ursula Medley. Growing up, he becomes absorbed in the affairs of Mantlemass and of the ironworking at Plashets. As war threatens England, the greed of traitors taints the wealden forest. Horses vanish from their stables, plans for weapons turn up missing from the forges, and smoke curls from the chimney of a cotaage long empty. Treason is lurking within the wood of Mantlemass. Ursula wonders who might betray England and turn against her?

Nicholas Highwood, master of the Mantlemass manor by default of a direct heir, and his sister Cecilia (Medleys on their mother's side) are desperately trying to keep the manor and the forge safe from the King's armies in the 1640s. But there is treachery within their household and Cecilia knows a long-held family secret that could jeopardize their existence. Forced to choose between King and Parliament, the household is bitterly divided