Killers of the King

by Charles Spencer

  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, a
nd 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