Returning to the more amenable Governor Endecott, Kellond and Kirke reported their failure to track down the wanted men. As a reward for their efforts, each of the commissioners received a farm of 250 acres – a hint of the bonanza they would have secured had their mission been successful. Meanwhile, the General Court had assumed that the regicides were no longer in the colony of New Haven, and felt it safe at last to authorise wide-ranging search warrants. Kellond and Kirke listed the obstructions that Leete had thrown up in a sworn affidavit that they handed to Governor Endecott on 30 May. By that time Leete had been confirmed as governor of the colony. He and Davenport were both under the strongest suspicion of having aided the regicides, and were put under careful watch.
Thanks to Kellond and Kirke, and the commotion they had stirred up during their determined manhunt, everyone in the surrounding communities knew two things for sure: the regicides were not far away, and rich prizes awaited those who helped in their capture. The pursuers’ parting shot had been to leave open offers of ‘great rewards to English and Indians who should give information that they might be taken’.28
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 securin
g, 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.
Killers of the King Page 30