Chapter 14

Into the Wilderness

 

Nowadays Monarchs pretend always in their Titles, to be Kings by the grace of God: but how many of them to this end only pretend it, that they may reign without control; for to what purpose is the grace of God mentioned in the Title of Kings, but that they may acknowledge no Superior?

John Calvin, 1561

 

The regicides saw their sufferings in biblical terms, convinced that they were the ‘witnesses’ described in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation – prophets who would be sent as the forerunners of the Second Coming. According to this text, the witnesses would be granted a period of divine authority and protection, but,

 

When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them and kill them. And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. Those from the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations will look at their dead bodies for three and a half days, and will not permit their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb. And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and celebrate; and they will send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth. But after three and a half days, the breath of life from God came into them, and they stood on their feet; and great fear fell upon those who were watching them. And they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, ‘Come up here.’ Then they went up into heaven in the cloud, and their enemies watched them. And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell; seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.

 

‘The beast that comes out of the abyss’ could readily be interpreted as the restored monarchy. The phrase, ‘And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city’, equated with the anguish of those who had been publicly butchered then displayed in London. This had been the period of the regicides’ greatest torment, but soon they would be revitalised by ‘the breath of life from God’. That was when they would be summoned from heaven to his glory, and would then be able to witness their enemies either suffer cruel destruction, or reach out for spiritual salvation.

Much of this faith dovetailed with the Fifth Monarchist expectation that the year 1666 would include the Day of Judgment. Whalley and Goffe were two who subscribed to this belief and both yearned for the beginning of that fateful year. In the meantime, as they moved from hiding place to hiding place, successfully evading the King’s men, it seemed that their faith in God was being repaid.

On 13 May 1661, according to tradition, while waiting for a more permanent sanctuary, the two men were in a remote area, desperate to find some shelter; looking up longingly at the boughs of the trees above them, one of them said, ‘Would to God we had a hatchet.’1 Just then they found an axe lying on the ground, probably dropped by a Native American. The major generals used it to lop off branches and made a basic roof over their heads. They referred to this place, which they believed had only come into being through God’s care, as ‘Hatchet Harbour’.

The fugitives knew that spending time in anyone’s home was likely to lead to discovery or betrayal so decided to live in the wilderness until immediate danger had passed. Goffe’s diary records the preparation of another of their refuges, ‘a cave or hole in the side of a hill’.2 It was surrounded by trees, with a freshwater spring just thirty yards away. Goffe called this hideaway ‘Providence’. They stayed in what is now known as ‘Judges’ Cave’, West Rock, from May to early June. Once during those four weeks, startled in the night by a prowling mountain lion, the pair bolted for the shelter of a nearby house. A sympathetic farmer sent his son out towards West Rock every morning with instructions to leave a bucket of food near the same tree stump each day. He said this was for some men working in the wilderness. Each evening the boy retrieved the bucket, which was empty. He was kept in the dark about the true identity of those he was feeding – in case he were tempted to gossip, and to spare him from punishment if the fugitives were discovered.

The Englishmen began to despair of escaping their pursuers for much longer. They became increasingly concerned that they would drag others down with them, when their inevitable capture came about. On 11 June they went to Guilford, sending a message to Deputy Leete that they had come to surrender: he should hand them over to Charles II. Leete was loath to do this, and hid them in his stone cellar for three days and nights while he tried to come up with an alternative plan. After sounding out trusted friends, Leete decided that the fugitives must continue in their efforts to evade capture; but they should also keep him informed of their where­abouts in case he ever had to call them in for arrest, to spare others from punishment on their behalf.

On 22 June, the judges showed themselves in public in New Haven before attending church there the following day. Appearing at this distance from Guilford was designed to absolve Davenport and Jones of the prevailing suspicion that the wanted men were hiding in their homes. They then returned to their cave on 24 June, staying there and at other hideouts for a further eight weeks until the Royalist searches began to lose momentum. As agreed with Leete, the governor always knew where they were.

In August, they moved to the house of Micah and Mary Tompkins, the parents of nine children, who were pioneer settlers in Milford. This would be their safe house for the next two years. At the Tompkins’, Goffe heard much about what had happened to his fellow regicides since his and Whalley’s flight from England; it was while in hiding here that he wrote down the names of all those he could remember as having been involved in the trial and execution of Charles I, along with the tidings he had received regarding their fates. As Ezra Stiles, an eighteenth-century Master of Yale, wrote, ‘Goffe’s list . . . shows that he had pretty just information, as to the number in 1662 dead; the number whose ashes were to be dishonoured; those adjudged to perpetual imprisonment, who were fled, and in the Tower. Enough to show Whalley and Goffe what would be their fate if taken.’3

The two major generals endured a bleak existence. Goffe recorded in his journal that he and Whalley never once dared to go outside during their two-year stay; they did not even venture out into the Tompkins’ orchard. They remained hidden in the house’s basement, while upstairs the daughters of the house busied themselves spinning yarn. Goffe and Whalley heard them at their work, often singing popular ballads brought over from England, some of which, to their amusement, ridiculed the regicides.

There were a few trusted visitors, including Davenport who led them in prayer during their grim confinement. Occasional letters passed between the fugitives and their families in England, through the hands of another minister, the Reverend Increase Mather, who was based in Boston. The voice of Frances, the wife of Goffe and the daughter of Whalley, was bravely upbeat in one of the first letters she sent to her husband; hope, longing and the agony of separation all call clearly from the page:

 

My dearest Heart,

I have been exceedingly refreshed with your choice and precious letter of the 29 May, 1662 . . . The preservation of yourself and my dear father, next to the light of his own countenance is the choicest mercy that I enjoy. For, to hear of your welfare gives, as it were, a new life to me . . . I shall now give you an account of your family, as far as I dare. Through mercy, I and your little ones are in reasonable health, only Betty and Nan are weakly, and I fear will be lame a little, the others are very lusty . . . I do heartily wish myself with thee, but that I fear will make be a means to discover thee . . . and therefore I shall forbear attempting any such thing for the present, hoping that the Lord will, in his own time, return thee to us again . . .

My dear, I know you are confident of my affection, yet give me leave to tell thee, thou art as dear to me as a husband can be to a wife, and, if I knew anything that I could do to make you happy, I should do it, if the Lord would permit, though to the loss of my life . . . I know not whether I may ever have another opportunity to send to you this season or not, which makes me [write] the longer now . . . and though it is an unspeakable comfort to me to hear of thy welfare, yet I earnestly beg of thee not to send too often, for fear of the worst; for they are very vigilant here to find out persons . . . And now, my dear, with 1,000 tears, I take my leave of thee, and recommend thee to the great keeper of Israel, who neither slumbers nor sleeps, who, I hope, will keep thee, and my dear friend with thee, from all your enemies . . . and in his own time return you with safety to your family. Which is the daily prayer of thy affectionate and obedient wife, till death, F.4

 

In another letter, Frances asked her husband to ‘be careful what you write, for all the letters we receive come from the post house’, to which he replied, ‘glad you informed me of it, for I would not make my letters too chary to you’.

It was at the Tompkins’ home that the regicides learnt of the capture and execution of Barkstead, Corbet and Okey. This dismal news reinforced their view that the only safe course was to remain in hiding, hopeful that the reign of the Stuarts would somehow be overthrown once more by God. Only such an event would enable them to return to their homeland and their families, and so live openly once more. In the meantime their boredom, isolation and fear were punctuated by gratifyingly inaccurate reports arriving from London: one had them assassinated in Switzerland, where the Royalist agent Riordane had mistakenly placed them in his dispatches, while others swore they had seen the major generals skulking in the Spanish Netherlands. However, the King’s ‘Searchers’ in New England remained certain that the fugitives were near at hand, and continued to look for them, reminding people of the rewards for betraying them and the punishments for assisting them. Three such commissioners, Colonel Thomas Temple, Captain Richard Lord and John Pynchon, swore never to give up the hunt for the fugitive pair.

On 4 July 1661, a month before Goffe and Whalley’s arrival at the Tompkins’ home, Edward Rawson, the Secretary of the Council of the Bay who had taken the sworn deposition of Kellond and Kirke, wrote to Leete from Boston. He wanted to notify Leete of Charles II’s great unhappiness with New Haven, given its reluctance to show him the loyalty he expected as King: had Leete, he wanted to know, even taken the trouble to proclaim the King’s accession to the throne?

Rawson also warned that there were rumours crossing from London that, such was the royal displeasure, Charles was planning to sell New Haven to Spain. ‘Further,’ Rawson continued, ‘I am required to signify to you, as from them, that the non-attendance with diligence to execute the King’s warrant for the apprehending of Colonels Whalley and Goffe will much hazard the present state of these colonies and your own particularly, if not some of your persons, which is not a little afflictive to them.’ Rawson stressed that the only way to counteract such dangers would be to ensure that the two regicides were found and handed over. He knew they had been spotted in New Haven in the previous two weeks, and the continued failure to seize them was threatening not just New Haven, but also its neighbouring colonies.

Rawson could not have made his exasperation any clearer, asking Leete for his ‘guidance and direction in [a] matter of such moment, as his Majesty may receive full and just satisfaction, the mouths of all opposers stopped, and the profession of the truth that is in you and us may not in the least suffer by you acting [in this way]’. There was a postscript to this letter: ‘Sir, since what I wrote, news and certain intelligence is come hither of the two Colonels being at New Haven, from Saturday to Monday and publicly known, and however it is given out that they came to surrender themselves.’ Rawson said it was further reported that, ‘nobody setting a guard about the house nor endeavouring to secure them’, they had been allowed to slip away once more. ‘Sir, how this will be taken is not difficult to imagine, to be sure not well, nay, will not all men condemn you . . .?’5 Rawson’s message was simple: hand over the two men immediately, or face the consequences for yourself, New Haven and its surrounding colonies.

On 1 August, a General Court was held in New Haven, attended by the governor and thirteen of his senior officers, to compose a reply to Rawson. It contained the reassurance that New Haven would readily

 

engage to [the King] full subjection and allegiance . . . with yourselves and the other neighbouring colonies . . . upon which grounds we both supplicate and hope to find a like protection, privileges, immunities and favours from his Royal Majesty. And as for that [which] you note of our not so diligent attention to his Majesty’s warrant, we have given you an account of before, that it was not done out of any mind to slight or disown his Majesty’s authority, &c. in the least, nor out of favour to the colonels, nor did it hinder the effect of their apprehending, they being gone before the warrant come into our colony, as is since fully proved.6

 

They blamed the King’s officers for arriving ‘without commission’, since their paperwork was incorrectly addressed to the nonexistent ‘Governor of New England’, while at the same time emphasising their embarrassment at failing to capture the two regicides: ‘We must wholly rely on the mercy of God and the King, with promise to do our endeavour to regain them if opportunity serve.’ In conclusion the colony of New Haven urged its neighbours to share the expense of sending an advocate to England, to counter all the mis-­information that was being peddled there against New England.

Davenport sent a further separate petition claiming that, in his capacity as a religious minister, he could see God’s hand in Goffe and Whalley’s many escapes. ‘Not for myself alone do I make this humble request,’ he wrote to a Royalist officer, ‘but also on behalf of this poor colony & our Governor & magistrates, who wanted neither will nor industry to have served his Majesty in apprehending the 2 Colonels, but were prevented & hindered by God’s overruling providence, which withheld them that they could not execute true purpose therein; And the same providence could have done the same,’ he added blithely, ‘in the same circumstances, if they had been in London, or in the Tower.’7

A month later, Leete was one of the seven signatories of the ‘Declaration of the Commissioners of the United Colonies concerning Whalley and Goffe’. Preferring an act of dishonesty to bringing down further wrath upon himself and his increasingly vulnerable colony, he put his hand to a document that claimed:

 

diligent search hath been made for the said persons in the several colonies (as we are informed) and whereas, notwithstanding it is conceived probable that the said persons may remain hid in some parts of New England, these are therefore seriously to advise and forewarn all persons whatsoever within the said colonies, not to receive, harbour, conceal or succour the said persons so attainted, or either of them, but that, as they may have any knowledge or information where the said Whalley and Goffe are, that they forthwith make known the same to some of the Governors or Magistrates next residing, and in the meantime do their utmost endeavour for their apprehending and securing, as they will answer the contrary at their utmost peril.8

 

Despite the written reassurances, Charles II was making little progress in his hunt. In 1664 he sent more commissioners to Boston from England – in four frigates, at the head of 400 soldiers. Their brief consisted of three parts: first, to capture New Amsterdam from the Dutch; secondly, to resolve various land disputes in New England; and thirdly, to round up any regicides that remained at large. ‘You shall make due enquiry,’ their commission ordered, ‘who stand attainted here in Parliament of high treason, have transported themselves thither, & do now inhabit or reside or are sheltered there, and if any such persons are there, you shall cause them to be apprehended and to be put on shipboard and sent hither; to the end that they may be proceeded with according to law . . . (for we will not suffer the Act of Indemnity to be in any degree violated).’9 This instruction was clear in its general intent, but its hesitant wording – ‘if any such persons are there’ – shows that the King’s advisers in London were no longer sure as to which (if any) of the regicides still made New England their refuge.

Learning of the arrival of the commissioners, the major generals moved again, this time back to Providence, their West Rock cave. They had only been in this trusted hideout for ten days when it was compromised. A Native American hunting party stumbled across their bedding there, and reported the find to the authorities. Goffe and Whalley knew they could never return to what had been their safest sanctuary.

During their investigations, the King’s commissioners heard that many of the cattle grazing Daniel Gookin’s pastures in Cambridge were the property of the two fugitives. They ordered the seizure of the herd, but Gookin insisted on his rights and blocked what he claimed to be an arbitrary and illegal confiscation of his property. He was told to report in person to London, but refused to go. Something of the difficulty of dealing with challenging settlers from very far away is shown in the fact that he went unpunished for this disobedience.

However, when it came to truly significant matters, the Atlantic proved no impediment to Charles II and his government: partly for its role in hiding the regicides, partly because he wanted to formalise New England’s subservient relationship to the British Crown, in 1665 Charles II deprived the colony of New Haven of its independence. It had been formed without any charter or commission from England. It had consistently flouted the King’s demands to have two of his father’s most prominent killers tracked down and handed over. For these reasons the colony was forcibly and permanently absorbed into Connecticut.

 

Eighty miles north of New Haven lay Hadley, a tiny community of a hundred or so houses covering a square half-mile on the River Connecticut. It had been settled five years earlier by a preacher, John Russell, and his followers – disaffected Puritans from the Connecticut towns of Hartford and Wethersfield. Russell had met Goffe and Whalley previously, and offered his new, isolated, settlement as a sanctuary. Now, in October 1663, Goffe and Whalley left for a new life in Hadley.

Russell sheltered them in his home, and kept them hidden from the other inhabitants. His simple, two-storey, dwelling was adapted to provide the Englishmen with hiding places on both floors, in the narrows behind the central chimney stack. Goffe and Whalley spent their days on the upper floor, where small windows allowed in daylight. The floor there had retractable floorboards which allowed speedy access into an enclosed space. This was where the secret house guests went whenever they needed to hide, and where they slept.

The two men’s lives were, however, no better than they had been in Milford. They lived in discomfort and isolation, in constant fear of discovery, again an invisible part of the household, secluded from the world. They relied on the generosity of friends and were particularly grateful to their old acquaintance Richard Saltonstall: when he returned to England with his family in 1672, he gave the two fugitives £50. The climate brought its own challenges: the winters in Hadley were extremely harsh. Frances Goffe suggested to her husband that he buy a wig for warmth; he replied patiently that her proposal, though thoughtful, would be of little use against the intense cold he faced, which was very much crueller than anything she would ever have encountered in England.

They also had to live with profound disappointments. Goffe and Whalley had remained confident in the prediction that 1666 would witness the Second Coming: then, all would be put right in the world, and they would be reunited with their loved ones. When 1666 came and went, it proved to be a year just like all others; the Great Fire of London was its one brush with cataclysm.

Life was equally difficult for the regicides’ relatives back home. Frances Goffe lived off the charity of an aunt, in poverty, thinking constantly of her husband and her father. To the former she wrote of one of their sons, Frederick, who ‘with the rest of thy dear babes that can speak, present their humble duty to thee, talk much of thee, and long to see thee’.10

In 1674, Goffe wrote to Frances, taking on the voice of a son writing to his mother, in case the correspondence was intercepted by the authorities. He began by thanking her for her letter of 29 March that year, which had reached him four months later. He mentioned further correspondence that he had sent in the meantime, which he hoped she would have received – while being grateful that all but one of his recent letters seemed to have made it safely to her. With the Third Anglo-Dutch War taking place predominantly at sea, Goffe acknowledged that they had been lucky that their correspondence got through to one another as often as it did.

Goffe’s wife had written with momentous family news: one of their daughters had died; while another daughter, Frances, had married. Goffe was happy to give his blessing to a union that he felt sure was blessed by God, since he understood his son-in-law to be a devout Christian: ‘I pray remember my most tender and affectionate love to them both, and tell them that I greatly long to see them, but since that cannot be at present, you may assure them that whilst they shall make it their great work to love the Lord Jesus in sincerity, and love one another for Christ’s sake.’ He offered passages in the Bible to encourage his wife and family in their faith, begging her not to worry about the lack of material things in their life, but to concentrate on spiritual matters instead. ‘Dear mother,’ he wrote, ‘I have been hitherto congratulating my new married sister, but I must now turn aside to drop a few tears upon the hearse of her that is deceased, whose loss I cannot choose but lament with tears, and so share with you in all the providences of God towards us, but my dear mother let me not be the occasion of renewing your grief, for I doubt not but you have grieved enough, if not too much already.’ He then moved on to family news from Hadley, bringing his wife up to date with details of her father’s ill health (he had probably suffered a stroke): ‘Your old friend Mr R. is yet living, but continues in that weak condition of which I formerly have given you account, and have not now much to add,’ he wrote:

 

He is scarce capable of any rational discourse, his understanding, memory and speech doth so much fail him, and seems not to take much notice of any thing that is either done or said, but patiently hears all things and never complains of any thing, though I fear it is some trouble to him that he hath had no letter of a long time from his cousin Rich [the codename for Mrs Whalley – the older major general’s wife] but speaks not one word concerning it, nor any thing you wrote of in your last. Only after I had read your letters to him, being asked whether it was not a great refreshment to him to hear such a gracious spirit breathing in your letters, he said it was none of his least comforts, and indeed he scarce ever speaks any thing but in answer to questions when they are put to him, which are not of any kinds, because he is not capable to answer them, the common and very frequent question is to know how he doth, and his answer, for the most part is, ‘very well, I praise God’, which he utters with a very low and weak voice; but sometimes he saith, ‘not very well’, or ‘very ill’, and then if it be further said, ‘do you feel any pain any where?’, to that he always answereth ‘no’, when he wants any thing he cannot well speak for, because he forgets the name of it, and sometimes asks for one thing when he means another, so that his eye or his finger is oftentimes a better interpreter of his mind than his tongue, but his ordinary wants are so well known to us, that most of them are supplied without asking or making signs for them, and some help he stands in need of in every thing to which any motion is required, having not been able of a long time, to dress or undress himself, nor to feed, or ease nature either way orderly, without help, and it is a great mercy to him that he hath a friend that takes pleasure in being helpful to him, and I bless the Lord that gives me such a good measure of health and strength, and an opportunity and a heart to use it in so good and necessary a work; for tho’ my help be but poor and weak, yet that ancient servant of Christ could not well subsist without it, and I do believe, as you are pleased to say very well, that I do enjoy the more health for his sake.

 

Goffe indicated that the end could not be too far off for his old friend and father-in-law, and said that in his most coherent moments it was Whalley’s fervent wish that his wife, family and friends keep him in their prayers. As for himself, Goffe stated openly, ‘The greatest thing I need is a heart to abide patiently in this condition until it is expended. I cannot but account it a great mercy that in these hard times you should be able to be so helpful to your poor children, but I beseech you let not your love to them make you to forget yourself, in parting with what is necessary for your own comfort in your old age.’

He signed off this letter affectionately, knowing that it would be passed around his immediate family and closest friends. He then added a postscript, for his wife’s eyes only. It was full of playful teasing that his dear, long-suffering, spouse could have misinterpreted an earlier letter he had sent as bearing anger towards her:

 

But oh, my dear mother, how could you fear such a thing from me? Yourself knoweth I never yet spake an angry word to you, nay I hope I may never say (without taking the name of God in vain) the Lord knoweth I never conceived an angry thought towards you, nor do I now, nor I hope never shall, and in so saying I do not commend my self, for you never gave me the least cause, neither have you now, and I believe never will, therefore, dear mother, the whole praise belongs to yourself, or rather to the Lord, who, blessed be his name, hath so united our hearts together in love, that it is a thing scarce possible to be angry with one another.11

 

Whalley died in 1675. The major generals had learnt of the dishonouring of Bradshaw, Cromwell and Ireton’s tombs and, in a bid to stop similar outrages happening to their remains, had elected to have secret graves. Two traditions exist relating to Whalley’s burial place: that it is either in the cellar of the regicides’ hosts, the Russell family (where unidentified human bones were found during an excavation decades later), or else under the boundary wall between two settlers’ farmsteads, so that neither landholder could be said to be the concealer of such a prominent outlaw, should his body ever be discovered.

 

In the summer of 1675, the frontier town of Hadley was placed in grave danger by a major rising of Native Americans. ‘King Philip’s War’ (named after the chief of the Wampanoag, Metacom, whose adopted name was Philip), would continue for almost three years. It saw the people of some of the northern tribes, including the Nipmug and Quanbang, rise up in an effort to wipe out the communities of European settlers that had taken root across their ancestral lands.

According to popular tradition, on 1 September the people of Hadley were observing a day of fasting, during which they were gathered together in prayer in the meeting house. Suddenly the town was attacked by Native Americans and, although the people had weapons to hand, they were panic-stricken at the thought of impending death. It was then that an unknown, elderly, man was said to have appeared in the meeting house. Taking command of the situation, and showing soldierly expertise, he organised everyone into a successful repulse of the attack.

Once the settlers were safe, the anonymous man slipped away: he sought no thanks, and was never seen again. This mystery figure became known as ‘the Angel of Hadley’. It was only when John Russell died in 1692 that it became common knowledge that the two regicides had lived in Hadley. After this ‘the Angel’ was quickly assumed to be the old New Model Army hero, Major General William Goffe. He was said to have brought to bear his military know-how for the salvation of a community that had been largely ignorant of his presence in their midst. After years of living in secret he had come into the open, to offer his fighting skills to the beleaguered settlement.

This story subsequently attracted the attention of romantics. Sir Walter Scott used the tale of Goffe’s intervention in his longest novel, Peveril of the Peak, in 1823. Some historians have painstakingly reconstructed the events of King Philip’s War to claim that Hadley was not in fact attacked on the day linked with this miraculous deliverance. However, others still prefer to believe that Goffe was involved in such an event; the exact timings, they argue, would be hard to synchronise, given that the events would have been covered up at the time by Goffe’s protectors.

What is certain is that after this time Goffe felt unable to remain in Hadley. In 1676 he informed Dr Increase Mather in Boston that he was leaving, after fifteen years hiding out in this remote backwater. He reappeared in 1678 in Hartford, where he was recognised and only narrowly avoided arrest. Even after nearly two decades on the run, he was still one of the English-speaking world’s most wanted men. In April 1680, a Royalist called John London would claim that Goffe still remained in Hartford, hidden in the house of a Captain Bull. Search warrants turned up nothing however. There were further unsubstantiated reports of his being in Narragansett (modern-day Rhode Island), Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Virginian theory is the most plausible and corresponds with a word-of-mouth tradition passed down among the eighteenth-century inhabitants of Hadley.

It seems certain that the hunt for the major generals continued after both were dead. Edward Randolph was sent to New England five times between 1676 and 1683 as inquisitor general. His remit was to break down the colonial settlements’ civil rights and religious freedoms, and bring them more firmly under the control of the British Crown. On his last mission, in 1683, he was specifically charged with making yet another search for Goffe and Whalley. The following year the governor expressed surprise that the pair were still being pursued: he told Randolph he had heard on good authority that they had travelled to Manhattan some time previously, en route for the Netherlands. That was the end of all searches for the pair, elusive even beyond death. The final testimony to Goffe’s success in avoiding capture lies in the fact that there is no record of when and where he died.

 

Sir Edmund Andros had been made governor of a new ‘super colony’, ‘the Dominion of New England’ in 1686, having served the Crown as governor of New York and New Jersey. During a tour of Connecticut he was attending morning service in New Haven one Sunday when his attention was drawn to a distinguished-looking man in his late seventies, standing in his eye-line. There was something about him. Andros was convinced of two things: ‘He has been a soldier, and has figured somewhere in a more public station than this.’12 When Andros appeared at that afternoon’s ceremony, keen to have a second look at the intriguing figure, he was nowhere to be seen. The local preacher recalled that Andros’s interest in him had so troubled the old man that he had ‘brought sundry papers (as he said of importance) sealed up, which he requested [me] to take into safe custody and not to suffer the seals to be broken till after [his] decease, declaring it was not so safe under present changes [that] those writings should be found in his hand’.13

The man had first surfaced in New Haven in 1670, then in his sixties, calling himself ‘James Davids’. He claimed that he had spent his working life as a merchant. Davids had money but no relatives, and chose to lodge with a childless couple, Mr and Mrs Ling, passing his day in solitary study (his favourite reading was said to be The History of the World by Sir Walter Raleigh) and quiet walks. His easy temper and obvious piety (he fasted every Friday) made him a popular addition to New Haven society. The same preacher remembered the newcomer as ‘an aged person of manifest great education, who called himself James Davids, but was generally supposed to be of another name; his observable wisdom and great knowledge in the English Law, state policy and European affairs made his conversation very valuable . . . and rendered said gentleman honourable with all that knew him’.14

When Mr Ling died in 1673, he left a request that the kind Mr Davids look after his widow, Joanna. Later that year Davids married Mrs Ling, but she only lived for a very short time after the wedding, leaving her husband of two weeks in possession of the £900 estate bequeathed to her by her first husband. Four years later, when aged seventy, he married again. This late second marriage produced a son and two daughters.

Andros had been correct in his deductions: Davids indeed had a military past, and he had held a prominent role in society. His true identity was Colonel John Dixwell, regicide.

A gentleman from Folkestone, Kent, Dixwell had enjoyed wealth and prominence in England, studying as a lawyer, serving as Sheriff of Kent, and then as an MP at different times for his county and for Dover. He was a stalwart Parliamentarian, being both a commissioner of the New Model Army and an active officer in the militia. He had attended all the days of Charles I’s trial, and had signed the death warrant.

In the summer of 1660 he had ignored the King’s proclamation to turn himself in, and secretly organised his affairs so he could fund his escape and time in hiding. In exile he had initially joined fellow refugees; first, in the free city of Hanau, before migrating to Switz­erland. (He had long been closely aligned to Ludlow’s committed republican beliefs.) There, he was believed by Charles II’s advisers to have died. Taking advantage of this misinformation, and nervous at the vulnerability of the regicides to assassination in Switzerland, he moved unnoticed to New England.

Dixwell visited Goffe and Whalley in Hadley in February 1665, staying with them for some time – perhaps for the entire five years when his movements are otherwise unaccounted for. A letter from Davenport suggests Dixwell was one of ‘three worthies’ in Hadley that he hoped to see in December of that year.

Fragments of Dixwell’s correspondence survive. His principal point of contact in London was his niece, Elizabeth Westrow, who used the pseudonym ‘Elizabeth Boyce’ in her letters. He also wrote to her husband and son. A man called Humphrey Davie, a resident of Boston, received money from family and friends in England to pass on to Dixwell: the colonel had avoided all employment since his arrival in New England, and steadily worked his way through his financial reserves. A receipt from the fugitive details the way in which money reached him: ‘Received now and formerly of Mr Hum. Davie, by the direction of Mr Increase Mather, thirty pounds New England money, by the order of Madam Elizabeth Westrow, in England.’15

Throughout his long exile Dixwell had remained steadfast in his beliefs, writing that, ‘the Lord will appear for his people, and the good old cause for which I suffer, and that there will be those in power again who will relieve the injured and oppressed’.16 His dreams seemed to have come true with the Glorious Revolution of November 1688: Charles II had died suddenly of a kidney infection in 1685 and been succeeded by his brother, the Duke of York, who reigned as James II.

James’s fervent Roman Catholicism was his downfall. It could perhaps be tolerated while his heirs were Protestant, as were the daughters of his first marriage; but the arrival of a son in 1688, whose mother was a Catholic, brought matters to a head. Deserted by his daughters, and by key courtiers and generals, James was forced into exile in a bloodless coup. He was replaced by William of Orange, whose mother had been one of Charles I’s daughters, and by William’s wife, Mary, who was James II’s eldest child.

Dixwell died of the dropsy – a disease of the vital organs, which resulted in swelling caused by excess fluid – in New Haven on 18 March 1689, after twenty-nine years in exile, before news of the change in ruler in England reached him. He left instructions that his gravestone be vague, so his enemies could not disturb his remains. It read:

 

‘J.D., Esq.,

Deceased March the 18th,

In the 82nd Year of His Age,

1689’

 

During his final illness he was tended by the preacher John Pierpoint, a long-standing friend and neighbour. Aware that he was dying, Dixwell told Pierpoint to open the chest containing his private papers. There he would find confirmation of his true identity.

Dixwell was perhaps the most successful of the regicides, reaching a great age after living in clear sight, leading a normal existence, and leaving behind a family. This was in glaring contrast to Goffe and Whalley, whose terror of being hauled back to England for hanging, drawing and quartering obliged them to endure a succession of miserable confinements, ‘banished from all human society’.17 Dixwell avoided that fate.

The New England regicides are remembered in New Haven, Connecticut, today: there you will find Dixwell Avenue, Goffe Street and Whalley Avenue – with rather more ease than the English redcoats ever had in locating the three gentlemen in question.