mned his
father, escaped to New England in 1660 and were well received there.
They were gentlemen of high position. Edward Whalley was a cousin of
Cromwell and Hampden. He had distinguished himself at Naseby and Dunbar,
and had risen to the rank of lieutenant-general. He had commanded at
the capture of Worcester, where it is interesting to observe that the
royalist commander who surrendered to him was Sir Henry Washington, own
cousin to the grandfather of George Washington. The other regicide,
William Goffe, as a major-general in Cromwell's army, had won such
distinction that there were some who pointed to him as the proper person
to succeed the Lord Protector on the death of the latter. He had married
Whalley's daughter. Soon after the arrival of these gentlemen, a royal
order for their arrest was sent to Boston. If they had been arrested and
sent back to England, their severed heads would soon have been placed
over Temple Bar. The king's detectives hotly pursued them through the
woodland paths of New England, and they would soon have been taken but
for the aid they got from the people. Many are the stories of their
hairbreadth escapes. Sometimes they took refuge in a cave on a mountain
near New Haven, sometimes they hid in friendly cellars; and once, being
hard put to it, they skulked under a wooden bridge, while their pursuers
on horseback galloped by overhead. After lurking about New Haven and
Milford for two or three years, on hearing of the expected arrival
of Colonel Nichols and his commission, they sought a more secluded
hiding-place near Hadley, a village lately settled far up the
Connecticut river, within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. Here the
avengers lost the trail, the pursuit was abandoned, and the weary
regicides were presently forgotten. The people of New Haven had been
especially zealous in shielding the fugitives. Mr. Davenport had not
only harboured them in his own house, but on the Sabbath before their
expected arrival he had preached a very bold sermon, openly advising
his people to aid and comfort them as far as possible. [28] The colony,
moreover, did not officially recognize the restoration of Charles II. to
the throne until that event had been commonly known in New England for
more than a year. For these reasons the wrath of the king was specially
roused against New Haven, when circumstances combined to enable him at
once to punish this disloyal colony and deal a blow at the Confederacy.
We