Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 377, March 1847

On the stone which I climbed, I found engraven a great number of names and initials, with dates of different years. Apparently they had been left there by visiters from the university. In more than one place, some ardent youth, in his first love with democracy, had taken pains to renew the inscription, which tradition says Goffe and Whalley placed over their retreat. “Opposition to tyrants is obedience to God.” I suppose there will always be fresh men to do Old Mortality’s office for this inscription, for the maxim is one which has long been popular in America among patriotic declaimers. How long it will continue generally popular, may indeed be doubted, since the abolitionists have lately adopted it, and in their mouths it becomes an incendiary watchword, which the supporters of slavery have no little reason to dread. I myself saw this motto on an anti-slavery placard set up in the streets of New York.

I inferred from this inscription, and the names on the rock, that the spot is visited by some with very different feelings from those which it excited in me and my companions. Our valuable conductor, it is true, spoke of “the Judges” with as much reverence as so sturdy a republican would be likely to show to any dignity whatever; and really the honest fellow seemed to give us credit for more tenderness than we felt, and tried to express himself in such a manner, when telling of the misery of the exiles, as not to wound our sensibilities. But I fear his consideration was all lost; for, sad as it is to think of any fellow-man reduced to such extremity as to take up a lodging like this, we could only think how many of the noble and the lovely, and how many of the true and loyal poor, had been brought by Goffe and Whalley to greater miseries than theirs. I could not force myself, therefore, to the melting mood; it was enough that I thought of January 30, 1648, and said to myself, “Doubtless there is a God that judgeth in the earth.” The lady recalled some facts from Lord Clarendon’s History, and said that her interest in the spot was far from having anything to do with sympathy for the regicides. Her patronising protector expressed his surprise, and jokingly assured me that she regarded it as a Mecca, or he would not have given himself the trouble of waiting on her to a place he so little respected. She owned that she was hardly consistent with herself in feeling any interest at all in the memorial of regicides; but I reminded her that Lord Capel kissed the axe which completed the work of rebellion, and deprived his royal master of life;24 and we agreed that even the intelligent instruments of that martyrdom acquired a sort of reliquary value from the blood with which they were crimsoned.

The troglodytes, then, were but two; but there was a third fugitive regicide who came to Newhaven, and now lies there in his grave. This was none other than John Dixwell, whose name, with those of Goffe and Whalley, may be found on that infamous death-warrant, which some have not scrupled to call the Major Charta. Dixwell’s is set among the οἱ πολλοι, who, in the day of reckoning, were judged hardly worth a hanging; but Whalley’s occupies the bad eminence of being fourth on the list, and next to the hard-fisted autograph of Oliver himself; while William Goffe’s is signed just before the signature of Pride, whose miserable penmanship that day, it will be remembered, cost his poor body an airing on the gibbet, in the year 1660. Scott, by the way, gives Whalley the prænomen Richard; but there it is on the parchment, too legible for his soul’s good – Edward Whalley. Shall I recur to the rest of their history in England before I come to my American narrative? Perhaps in these days of “elucidations,” when it is said that every thing about two hundred years since is, for the first time, undergoing a calm but earnest review, I may be indulged in recapitulating what, if every body knows, they know only in a great confusion with other events, which impair the individual interest.

Of Dixwell, comparatively little is known, save that his first act of patriotism seems to have consisted in leaving his country. Enough that he served in the parliamentary army; sat as judge, and stood up as regicide in that High Court of Treason in Westminster Hall; was one of Oliver’s colonels during the Protectorate; became sheriff of Kent, and no doubt hanged many a rogue that had a better right to live than himself; and finally sat in parliament for the same county in 1656.25 His experiences after the Restoration are not known, till he emerged in America almost ten years after the last-mentioned date.

Whalley was among the more notorious of the rebels. He was cousin to Oliver, and one of the few for whom Oliver sometimes exhibited a savage sort of affection. He proved himself a good soldier in a bad cause, at Naseby; and a furious one at Banbury. When the rogues fell out among themselves, he was the officer that met Cornet Joyce as he was convoying the king’s majesty from Holmby,26 and offered to relieve the royal prisoner of his protector; an offer which Charles with great dignity refused, preferring to let them have all the responsibility in the matter, and not caring a straw which of the two villains should be his jailor. At Hampton Court, however, fortune decided in favour of Whalley, and put the king, for a time, into his power; till like fortune put it into the king’s power to get rid of his brutality by flight, an accident for which our hero got a hint of displeasure from parliament. Just at this point Cromwell addressed a letter to his “dear cousin Whalley,”27 begging him not to let any thing happen to his majesty; in which his sincerity was doubtless as genuine as that of certain patriots in the Pickwick history, who, out of regard to certain voters coming down to the election, with money in their hands and tears in their eyes, besought the senior Weller not to upset the whole cargo of them into the canal at Islington. After getting out of this scrape, and doing the damning deed that got him into a worse one, he fleshed his sword against the king’s Scottish kinsmen, at Dunbar, where he lost a horse under him, and received a cut in his wrist,28 though not severe enough to prevent his writing a saucy letter to the governor of Edinburgh castle. He was the man that took away the mace, when Cromwell broke up his Barebones’ parliament. Then he rode through Lincoln, and five other counties, dealing with recusant Anabaptists,29 as one of the “Major Generals;” demurred a little, at first, at the king-manufacturing conference, but finally came into the project; and, from a sense of duty, so far overcame his republican scruples as to allow himself to take a seat in the House of Lords, as one of the Oliverian peerage.30 If titles were to be had with estates, like the Lordship of Linne, he was surely entitled to his peerage, for he was growing fat on the Duke of Newcastle’s patrimony, with part of the jointure of poor Henrietta Maria, when, God be praised, the day of reckoning arrived; and my Lord Whalley, surmising that, should any one come to the rope, he was likely to swing if he remained in England, made off beyond seas.

Goffe, too, was of the Cromwellian cousinry, having married a daughter of Whalley.31 He was a soldier, but could do a little exposition besides, when there was any call for such an exercise; as, for instance, at that celebrated groaning and wrestling which was performed at Windsor, and ended in resolving on the murder of the king,32 after extraordinary supplication and holding forth. When father Whalley removed the mace, son-in-law Goffe led in the musqueteers, and bolted out the Anabaptists, against whom he rode circuit through Sussex and Berks, growing rich, and indulging dreams of disjointing the nose of Richard, and thrusting himself into the old shoes of the Protector, as soon as they should be empty.33 He, too, sacrificed his feelings so far as to become a lord; and, perhaps, thinking that royal shoes would fit him as well as republican ones, he at last consented to making Oliver a king.34 Nor were his honours wholly of a civil character, for he was made an M.A. at Oxford, and so secured himself a notice in Anthony Wood’s biographies, where his story concludes with a set of mistakes, so relishably served up, that I must give it in the very words of the Fasti, as follows: – “In 1660, a little before the restoration of King Charles II., he betook himself to his heels to save his neck, without any regard had to his majesty’s proclamation; wandered about fearing every one that he met should slay him; and was living at Lausanna in 1664, with Edmund Ludlow, Edward Whalley, and other regicides, when John l’Isle, another of that number, was there, by certain generous royalists, despatched. He afterwards lived several years in vagabondship; but when he died, or where his carcase was lodged, is as yet unknown to me.”35

On Christmas day, 1657, good John Evelyn went to London, in spite of many severe penalties incurred thereby, to receive the holy sacrament from a priest of the Church of England.36 Mr. Gunning, afterwards Bishop of Ely, was the officiating clergyman, and preached a sermon appropriate to the festival. As he was proceeding with the Eucharist, the place where they were worshipping was beset by Oliver’s ruffians, who, pointing their muskets at the communicants, through the doors and windows, threatened to shoot them as they knelt before the altar. Evelyn surmises that they were not authorised to go so far as that, and consequently they did not put their threat into execution; but both priest and people were taken prisoners, and brought under guard before the magistrates to answer for the serious misdemeanour of which they had been guilty. Before whom should the gentle friend of Jeremy Taylor find himself standing as a culprit, but these worshipful Justices, Whalley and Goffe! It was, doubtless, by their orders that the solemnities of the day had been profaned.

Evelyn seems to have got off with only a severe catechizing; but many of his fellow-worshippers were imprisoned, and otherwise severely punished. The examination was probably conducted by the theologically exercised Goffe, for the specimen preserved by Evelyn is worthy of his genius in every way. The amiable confessor was asked how he dared to keep “the superstitious time of the Nativity;” and was admonished that in praying for kings, he had been praying for Charles Stuart, and even for the king of Spain, who was a Papist! Moreover, he was told that the Prayer-book was nothing but the Mass in English, and more to the like effect; “and so,” says Evelyn, “they dismissed me, pitying much my ignorance.”

This anecdote, accidentally preserved by Evelyn, shows what kind of characters they were. They seem to have been as sincere as any of their fanatical comrades, though it is always hard to say of the Puritan leaders which were the cunning hypocrites, and which the deluded zealots. Whatever they may have been, their time was short, so far as England is concerned with them; and in three years after this event, they suddenly disappeared. So perfectly did they bury themselves from the world, that from the year 1660, till the romance of Scott37 again brought the name of Whalley before the world, it may be doubted whether any thing was known in England of lives, which in another hemisphere were protracted almost into another generation. Nobody dreamed there was yet an American chapter in the history of the regicides.

Yet, considering the known disposition of the colonies, and their inaccessible fastnesses, it is remarkable that only three of the fugitives found their way across the Atlantic. Another, indeed, there was, a mysterious person, of whom it is only known, that though concerned in the regicide, he was not probably one of “the judges.” He lived in Rhode Island till he was more than a hundred years old, begetting sons and daughters, to whom he bequeathed the surname of Whale. Whoever he was, he seems to have been a sincere penitent, whose conscience would not let him rest. He slept on a deal board instead of a bed, and practised many austerities, accusing himself as a man of blood, and deprecating the justice of God. The particulars of his guilt he never disclosed; and as his name was probably an assumed one, it is difficult to surmise what share he had in the murder of his king. There was in Hacker’s regiment one Whalley, a lieutenant; and Stiles, the American writer, thinks this Whale may have been the same man. But then, what did this Whalley perpetrate to account for such horrible remorse? Considering Hacker’s active part in the bloodiest scene of the great tragedy, and the conflicting testimony in Hulet’s trial,38 as to the man that struck the blow; and coupling this with the fact, that an effort was made to procure one of several lieutenants to do the work,39 I confess I once thought there was some reason to suspect that this fellow’s accusing conscience was terribly earned, and that he at least had been one of the masks that figured on the scaffold. This surmise, though shaken by nothing that came out on the state trials, I have since discharged, in deference to the opinion of Miss Strickland,40 who is satisfied that the greybeard was Hulet, and the actual regicide, Gregory Brandon.

The American history of the regicides begins with the 27th of July following the Restoration, when Whalley and Goffe landed at Boston, bringing the first news that the king had been proclaimed, of which it seems they had tidings before they were clear of the Channel. Proscribed as they were, they were heroes among the colonists, and even Endicott, the governor, ventured to give them a welcome. The inhabitants of Boston and its environs paid them many attentions, and they appeared at large with no attempt at concealing their names and character. The Bostonians were not all Republicans, however; and several zealously affected Royalists having been noticed among their visiters, they suddenly conceived the air of Cambridge more salubrious than that of Boston, and took up their abode in that village, now a mere suburb of the city. There they freely mingled with other men, and were admitted as communicants in the Calvinistic meetings of the place; and sometimes, it appears, they even ventured, like the celebrated party at the Peak, “to exhibit their gifts in extemporaneous prayer and exposition.” On visiting the city, they once received some insult, for which the assailant was bound over to keep the peace; though, if he had but known it, he was so far from having done any wrong in the eye of law, that he was entitled to a hundred pounds reward, for bringing before a magistrate either of the worthies who appeared against him. The authorities, however, had received no official notice of the Restoration, and chose to go on as if still living under the golden sway of the second Protector.

A story is told of one of the regicides, while living at Cambridge, which deserves preservation, as it not only illustrates the open manner in which thy went to and fro, but also shows how well exercised were the soldiers of Cromwell in military accomplishments. A fencing-master had appeared at Boston, challenging any man in the colonies to play at swords with him; and this bravado he repeated for several days, from a stage of Thespian simplicity, erected in a public part of the town. One day, as the mountebank was proclaiming his defiance, to the terror and admiration of a crowd of bystanders, a country-bred fellow, as it seemed, made his appearance in the assembly, accepting the challenge, and pressing to the encounter with no other weaponry than a cheese done up in a napkin for a shield, and a broom-stick, well charged with puddle water, which he flourished with Quixotic effect as a sword. The shouts of the rabble, and the confusion of the challenger, may well be imagined; but the countryman, throwing himself into position, lustily defied the man of foils to come on. A sharp command to be gone with his nonsense, was all the notice which the other would vouchsafe; but the rustic insisted on having satisfaction, and so stubbornly did he persist in brandishing his broomstick, and opposing his cheese, that the gladiator, in a towering fury, at last drove at him desperately enough. The thrust was very coolly received in the soft and savoury shield of the countryman, who instantly repaid it by a dexterous daub with his broom, soaking the beard and whiskers of the swordsman with its odorous contents. A second and more furious pass at the rustic was parried with masterly skill and activity, and rewarded by another salute from the broomstick, which ludicrously besmeared the sword-player’s eyes; the crowd setting up a roar of merriment at his crest-fallen appearance. A third lunge was again spent upon the cheese, amid shouts of laughter; while the broomsman calmly mopped nose, eyes, and beard, of his antagonist’s puffing and blowing physiognomy. Entirely transported with rage and chagrin, the champion now dropped his rapier, and came at his ridiculous adversary with the broadsword. “Hold, hold, my good fellow,” cried Broomstick, “so far all’s fair play! but if that’s the game, have a care, for I shall certainly take your life.” At this, the confounded gladiator stood aghast, and staring at the absurd apparition before him, cried out, amid the jeers of the mob, “Who is it? there were but two in England that could match me! It must be Goffe, Whalley, or the Devil!” And so it proved, for it was Goffe.

In November, came out the Act of Indemnity, by which it appeared that Goffe and Whalley were not included in the amnesty which covered a multitude of sins. It was nevertheless far in February before the governor had entered upon even a formal inquiry of his council, as to what he should do with the fugitives; a formality which, empty as it was, must have occasioned their abrupt departure from Massachusetts. At Newhaven, a concentrated Puritanism seems to have offered them a much safer asylum;41 and as a brother-in-law of Whalley’s had lately held a kind of pastoral dignity in that place, it is not improbable that they received pledges of protection, should they choose it for their city of refuge. One now goes from Boston to Newhaven, by railroad and steamer, in less than a day; but in those times it was very good travelling which brought them to their Alsatia in less than a fortnight. There they were received as saints and confessors; and Davenport, the strait-laced pastor of the colony, seems to have taken them under his especial patronage. He seems to have been a kind of provincial Hugh Peters, though he was not without his virtues: and there was far more fear of him before the eyes of the local authorities, than there was of King Charles and his Council. His Majesty was in fact completely browbeaten and discomfited, when his warrant was afterwards brought into collision with the will of this doughty little Pope: and to him the regicides owed it, that they finally died in America.

The government at home seems really to have been in earnest in the matter, and a royal command was not long in reaching Endicott, requiring him to do all his power for the arrest of the runaways. He seems to have been scared into something like obedience, and two zealous young royalists offering their services as pursuers, he was obliged to despatch them to Newhaven. So vigorously did these young men prosecute their errand, that but for the bustling fanaticism of Davenport, they would certainly have redeemed the honour of the colonies, and given their lordships at Westminster Hall the trouble of two more state trials. For its own sake, no one, indeed, can be sorry that such was not the result. But when one thinks how many curious details of history would have transpired on the trials of such prominent rebels, it seems a pity that they could not have been made serviceable in this way, and then set, with Prynne, to do penance among the old parchments in the Tower.

The governor of the Newhaven colony, one Leete, lived a few miles out of the town, but not far enough off to be out of the control of Davenport, whose spiritual drill had got him in good order for the expected encounter. That painstaking pastor had, moreover, felt it his duty to give no uncertain blast of preparation on his Sabbath-day trumpet, and had sounded forth his deep concern for the souls committed to his care, should they, by any temptation of the devil, be led to think it scriptural to obey the king and magistrate, instead of him, their conscience-keeper and dogmatist. With a skill in the application of holy writ, peculiar to the Hugh Peters’ school of divinity, he had laboriously pounded his cushion, in some thirty or forty illustrations of the following text from the prophet Isaiah: “Hide the outcasts, bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab! be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler.”42 After this exposition, there was of course no dispute as to duty. The Pope is a deceiver, and Catholic Councils are lies; but when was a Puritan preacher ever doubted, by his followers, to be an oracle from heaven?

It was in vain that the loyal pursuers came to Newhaven, after the little general had thus got his forces prepared for the contest. Wellington, with the forest of Soignies behind him, at Waterloo, was not half so confident of wearing out Napoleon, as Davenport was of beating back King Charles the Second, in his presumptuous attempt to govern his Puritan colonies. Accordingly, when the pursuers waited on Governor Leete, they found his conscience peculiarly tender to the fact, that they were not provided with the original of his Majesty’s command, which he felt it his duty to see, before he could move in the business. He finally yielded so far, however, as to direct a warrant to certain catchpoles, requiring them to take the runaways, accompanying it, as it would seem, with assurances of affectionate condolence, should they happen to let the criminals, when captured, effect a violent escape. A preconcerted farce was enacted, to satisfy the forms of law, the bailiffs seizing the regicides, a mile or two from town, as they were making for East Rock; and they very sturdily defending themselves, till the officers had received bruises enough, to excuse their return without them. But after this pleasant little exercise, the regicides had an escape of a more really fortunate character, and quite in the style of King Charles Second’s Boscobel adventures. For while cooling themselves under a bridge, they discovered the young Bostonians galloping that way, and had only time to lie close, when a smart quadrupedal hexameter was thundered over their heads, as they lay peering up through the chinks of the bridge at their furious pursuers. No doubt the classic ear of Goffe, the Oxford Master of Arts, was singularly refreshed with the delightful prosody, which the retiring horse-hoofs still drummed on the dusty plain; but they seem to have been so seriously alarmed by their escape, that if they ever smiled again, they certainly had little cause for their good-humour; for that very day they took to the woods, and entered upon a long and wretched life of perpetual apprehension, from which death, in any shape, would have been, to better men, a comfortable relief. They immediately directed their course towards West Rock, where, with an old hatchet which they found in the forest, they built themselves a booth in a spot which is still called, from the circumstance, “Hatchet-Harbour.” Here they became acquainted with one Sperry, the woodman who finally fitted up the cave, and introduced them to their life in the rock.

It seems that on stormy days, and sometimes for mere change of air, the poor Troglodytes would come down the mountain, and stay a while with the woodman at his house. They had lived about a month in their cave, when such an excursion to the woodman’s had nearly cost them their liberty. The pursuers, meantime, had accomplished a wild-goose chase to New York, and had returned, after more perils and troubles than the regicides were worth. Somehow or other, they got scent of their game this time, and actually came upon them at Sperry’s before they had any notice of their approach. Fortune favouring them, however, they escaped by a back-door, and got up to their nest, without giving a glimpse of themselves to the pursuers, or even leaving any trace of their visit to favour a suspicion that they had recently been in Sperry’s protection. But Leete, who had received at last the original warrant, and thus was relieved of his scruples, seems to have been so alarmed about this time, that he sent word to the fugitives that they must hold themselves ready to surrender, if it should prove requisite for his own safety and that of the town. To the credit of the poor men, on receiving this notice, they came out of their cave like brave fellows, and went over to their cowardly protector, offering to give themselves up immediately.