The American Revolution did not just happen. It was the culmination of two centuries of Enlightenment ideas that entered men's minds and were refined and honed until they expressed themselves in an unprecedented rejection of tyranny in the name of individual rights and political freedom from the whims of arrogant monarchs and conniving, power-lusting politicians. Sparrowhawk: Book One, Jack Frake encapsulates that process in the story of a Cornwall peasant boy who rejects the tyranny of the British Crown and joins a unique smuggling gang whose members are also in revolt against the arbitrary powers of the government. By the end of his story, young Jack Frake is sent to Virginia as an indentured felon, and by the end of the Sparrowhawk series, thirty years later, in 1775, he will lead his own militia to the heights of Bunker Hill.