own peculiar history very
minutely foreshadowed. They had heard of the sad end of Hugh Peters, and
his confederates, which they were persuaded was the slaying of the two
witnesses, predicted in the Apocalypse;[43] and they now looked in sure
and certain hope for the year 1666, which they presumed would be marked
by some great revolution, probably on account of its containing "the
number of the Beast."[44] But after two years in this cellar, there
arrived in Boston certain royal commissioners, in fear of whom they
again retreated to their cave, and stayed there two months, till the
wild beast drove them away. About the same time, an Indian getting sight
of their tracks, and finding their cave, with a bed in it, made such an
ado about his discovery, that they were obliged to abandon Newhaven for
ever. It is probable that Davenport now counselled their removal, and
provided their retreat; for one Russell, the pastor of Hadley, a
backwood settlement in Massachusetts, engaged to receive and lodge them;
and thither they went by star-light marches, a distance of an hundred
miles, through forests, where, if "there is a pleasure in the pathless
woods," they probably found it the only one in their journey. Rogues as
they were, who can help pitying them, thus skulking along by night
through an American wilderness, in terror of a king, three thousand
miles away, who all the while was revelling with his harlots, and
showing as little regard for the memory of his father as any regicide
could desire.

At Hadley, pastor Russell received them into his kitchen, and then into
a closet, from which, by a trap-door, they were let down into the
cellar--there to live long years, and there to die, and there--one of
them--to be buried, for a time. While dwelling in this cellar, poor
Goffe kept a record of his daily life; and it is much to be regretted
that this curious journal perished, at Boston, in the succeeding
century, during the riots about the Stamp Act, in which several houses
were burned. Scraps of it still exist, however, in copies; and enough is
known of it, to prove that the exiles were kept in constant information
of the progress of events in England; that Goffe corresponded with his
wife, addressing her as his mother, and signing himself Walter
Goldsmith; and that pastor Russell was supplied with remittances for
their support. One leaf of the diary which, fortunately, was copied, is
a mournful catalogue of the regicides, and their