This book, which the group read in October, is clearly a well-researched book about the post civil war repercussions following the hunt for the last of the signatories of Charles 1st’s death warrant. It was written in an accessible style, in modern English, as it led us back and forth across the Atlantic to the 'new world' of Puritan settlers in North America. Most of us enjoyed the narrative as it led us on this relentless chase, through the poverty and privations of the fugitives, Ned (Edward) Whalley and his son-in-law Will Goffe, and indeed Katherine Whalley, Will's wife, left behind in London with their five children to survive the plague,  the great fire of London, homelessness, dire poverty and sickness whilst simultaneously enduring the relentless pursuit by the fictitious character of Richard Naylor, the vengeful, self-appointed, man-hunter determined to destroy the two men (Ned and Will) who caused the death of his much loved young wife, Sarah, and their unborn child.
In the end, after a fourteen year hunt, Naylor finds his prey, in Connecticut, but he is shot at the last moment by Katherine, as she too has discovered her long-lost husband, Will, and they ride off in a little horse drawn buggy into the sunset to live 'happily ever after'........or do they?
(The ending is also fictitious,  as there is no trace of William Goffe after 1674. Although he nursed his father-in-law, Edward, after his stroke for a number of years as fugitives in New England before William's eventual death at the end of 1674).