wards brought into collision with the will| of this doughty little Pope: and to him the regicides owed it, that they finally died in America. It was in vain that the loyal pursuers came to New Haven, after the little general had thus got his forces prepared for the contest. Wellington, with the forest of The government at home seems really to Soignies behind him, at Waterloo, was not have been in earnest in the matter, and a half so confident of wearing out Napoleon, royal command was not long in reaching as Davenport was of beating back King Endicott, requiring him to do all in his Charles the Second, in his presumptuous power for the arrest of the runaways. He attempt to govern his Puritan colonies. seems to have been scared into something Accordingly, when the pursuers waited on like obedience, and two zealous young roy-Governor Leete, they found his conscience alists offering their services as pursuers, he peculiarly tender to the fact, that they were was obliged to despatch them to New Ha- not provided with the original of his Maven. So vigorously did these young men jesty's command, which he felt it his duty prosecute their errand, that but for the to see, before he could move in the busibustling fanaticism of Davenport, they ness. He finally yielded so far, however, would certainly have redeemed the honor as to direct a warrant to certain catchpoles, of the colonies, and given their lordships at requiring them to take the runaways, acWestminster Hall the trouble of two more companying it, as it would seem, with state trials. For its own sake, no one, in-assurances of affectionate condolence, deed, can be sorry that such was not the should they happen to let the criminals, result. But when one thinks how many when captured, effect a violent escape. A curious details of history would have trans- preconcerted farce was enacted, to satisfy pired 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 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 The governor of the New Haven colony, their return without them. But after this one Leete, lived a few miles out of the pleasant little exercise, the regicides had town, but not far enough off to be out of an escape of a more really fortunate chathe control of Davenport, whose spiritual racter, and quite in the style of King Charles drill had got him in good order for the ex- Second's Boscobel adventures. For while pected encounter. That painstaking pas- cooling themselves under a bridge, they distor had, moreover, felt it his duty to give covered the young Bostonians galloping that no uncertain blast of preparation on his way, and had only time to lie close, when Sabbath-day trumpet, and had sounded a smart quadrupedal hexameter was thunforth his deep concern for the souls com-dered over their heads, as they lay peering mitted to his care, should they, by any up through the chinks of the bridge at their temptation of the devil, be led to think it furious pursuers. No doubt the classic car scriptural to obey the king and magistrate, of Goffe, the Oxford Master of Arts, was instead of him, their conscience-keeper and singularly refreshed with the delightful dogmatist. With a skill in the application prosody, which the retiring horse-hoofs of holy writ, peculiar to the Hugh Peters' still drummed on the dusty plain; but school of divinity, he had laboriously they seem to have been so seriously alarmpounded his cushion, in some thirty or ed by their escape, that if they ever smiled forty illustrations of the following text from again, they certainly had little cause for the prophet Isaiah: "Hide the outcasts, their good humor; for that very day they bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine took to the woods, and entered upon a long outcasts dwell with thee, Moab! be thou a and wretched life of perpetual apprehencovert to them from the face of the spoiler." "*sion, from which death, in any shape, After this exposition, there was of course would have been, to better men, a comno dispute as to duty. The Pope is a de-fortable relief. They immediately directed ceiver, and Catholic Councils are lies; but their course towards West Rock, where, when was a Puritan preacher ever doubted, with an old hatchet which they found in by his followers, to be an oracle from the forest, they built themselves a booth heaven? * Isaiah xvi., 3. in a spot which is still called, from the circumstance, "Hatchet-Harbor." 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 favoring them, however, they escaped by a backdoor, and got up to their nest, without giving a glimpse of themselves to the pursuers, or even leaving any trace of their visit to favor 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. Here the redoubtable Davenport again interfered, and though all the colony began to be of another opinion, he fairly drubbed the prudent Leete into a postponement of the time of surrender; and Goffe and Whalley were accordingly respited for a week, during which they lived in painful suspense, in the cellar of a neighboring warehouse, supplied with food from the governor's table, but never admitted to his presence. Meantime, the bustling pastor preached and exhorted, and stirred up all the important settlers to take his part against the timorous counsels of the governor, and finally succeeded in preventing the surrender altogether; and the fugitives went back to their cave, never again to show themselves openly before men, though their days were prolonged through half another lifetime. It seems incredible that there was any real call for such singular caution, under the loose reign of Charles the Second: yet it is remarkable how timid they had become, and how long they supported their patient mousing in the dark. Nothing seems to have inspired them with confidence after this. The pursuers returned to Boston, and made an indignant report of the contempt with which his Majesty's authority had been treated at New Haven; all which had no other effect than to give color to a formal declaration of the united colonies of New England, that an ineffectual though thorough search had been made. On this the hue and cry was suffered to stop; but the regicides still kept close, and shunned the light of day. Who would have believed that the lusty Goffe and Whalley, whose fierce files of musqueteers seemed once their very shadow, could have subsided into such decorous subjects, as to live for three lustres in the heart of a village, so quietly, that, save their feeder, not a soul ever saw or heard of them. Yet so it proved; for so much do circumstances make the difference between the anchorite and the revolutionist, and so possible is it for the same character to be very noisy and very still. After two months more in the cave, they probably found it time to go into winter quarters, and accordingly shifted to a village a little westward of New Haven, where one Tompkins received them into his cellar. There they managed to survive two years, during which their only recreation seems to have been, the sorry one of hearing a maid abuse them, as she sang an old royalist ballad over their heads. Even this was some relief to the monotony of their life in the cellar, and they would often get their attendant to set it agoing. The girl, delighted to find her voice in request, and little dreaming what an audience she had in the pit, would accordingly strike up with great effect, and fugue away on the names of Goffe and Whalley, and their fellow Roundheads, like another Wildrake. Perhaps the worthies in the cellar consoled themselves with recalling the palmy days, when the same song, trolled out on the night air from some royalist pothouse, had been their excuse for. displaying their vigilant police, and putting under arrest any number of drunken malignants. If they had any additional consolation, it seems to have been derived from an enthusiastic interpretation of Holy Writ, in which, after the manner of their religion, they saw their own peculiar history very minutely foreshadowed. They had heard of the sad end of Hugh Peters, and his con classed according to their fate, with some "Some slain in war, federates, which they were persuaded was the slaying of the two witnesses, predicted in the Apocalypse; 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 Beasts." But after two years in this cel-ful registry indeed, lar, there arrived in Boston certain royal commissioners, in fear of whom they again Some haunted by the ghosts they had deposed;" retreated to their cave, and stayed there two months, till the wild beasts drove them but all noted by the wanderer as his friends, away. About the same time, an Indian" faithful and just to him.” Twenty-six getting sight of their tracks, and finding their cave with a bed in it, made such an ado about this discovery, that they were obliged to abandon New Haven 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 one 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 accomplices, all are marked as certainly dead; others, as condemned and in the Tower; some as fugitives, and some, as quietly surviving their ruin and disgrace. How dark must have been the past and the future alike to men whose histories were told in such chronicles; but thus timorously from their "loop-hole retreat," did they look out on the Great Babel; and saw their cherished year of the Beasts go by, and still no change; and then consoled themselves with hoping there was some slight error in the vulgar computation; and so hoped on against hope, and kept in secret their awful memories, and perchance with occasional misgivings of judgment to come, pondered them in their hearts. At Hadley they had one remarkable visitor, from whom they probably learned much gloomy gossip about things at home. In 1665, John Dixwell joined them, having made his escape to the colonies with astonishing secresy. He seems to have been a venturous fellow, who was far from willing to spend his days in a cellar, and accordingly he soon left them to their own company, and went, nobody knows where; but it is certain that in 1672, he appeared in New Haven as Mr. James Davids, took a wife, and settled down with every sign of a determination to die in his bed. The first Mrs. Davids dying without issue, we find him, a few years after, married again, begetting children, and supporting the reputation of a grave citizen, who kept rather shy of his neighbors, and was fond of long prosy talks with his minister-the successor of Davenport, who seems to have rested from his labors. I wonder if those talks were so prosy? The good wife of the house supposed Mr. Davids and her husband engaged in edifying conclave upon the five points of Calvinism: but who does not envy that drowsy New England pastor the stories he heard of the great events of the Rebellion, from the lips of one who had - himself been an actor therein! How often ing-house, around which sentinels were he filled his pipe, and puffed his pleasure, kept on patrol. The house of the pastor or laid it down at a more earnest moment, was only a few rods distant; and probably, to hear the stirring anecdotes of Oliver; through the miserable panes that let in all how he looked; how he spoke and com- the sun-light of their cellar, Goffe watched manded! What unwritten histories the the invasion of the Indians, and all the pastor must have learned of Strafford, horrors of the fight, till the fires of Dunbar of Laud,-of Pym pouncing on his quarry, began to burn again in his old veins, and -of how the narrator felt, when he sat as overcoming his usual caution, sent him a regicide judge,--and of that right royal forth to his last achievement in this world, face which he had confronted without re- and perhaps his best. Of a sudden, as the lenting, with all its combined expressions, settlers were giving up all for lost, and of resignation and resolution, of kingly about to submit to a general massacre, a dignity and Christian submission. strange apparition was seen among them, exTime went on, and the Hadley regicides horting them to rally in the name of God. wasted away in their cellar, while Dixwell An old man, with long white locks, and of thus flourished like a bay-tree in green old unusual attire, led the last assault with the age. A letter from Goffe, to his "mother most daring bravery. Not doubting that Goldsmith," written in August, 1674, of it was an angel of God, they followed up which a copy is preserved, shows that years his blows, and in a short time repulsed the had been doing their work on the once bold savages; but their deliverer was gone. and stalwart Whalley. "Your old friend No clue or trace could be found of his Mr. R.," he says, using the feigned initial, coming or going. He was to them as "is yet living, but continues in that weak Melchisedeck, "without beginning of life, condition. 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... and it's a great mercy to him, that he hath a friend that takes pleasure in being helpful to him... for though my help be but poor and weak, yet that ancient servant of Christ could not well subsist without it. The Lord help us to profit by all, and to wait with patience upon him, till we shall see what end he will make with us. "" or end of days;" and their confirmed superstition that the Lord had sent his angel in answer to their prayers, though quite in accordance with their enthusiasm, was doubtless not a little encouraged by the wily pastor himself, as an innocent means of preventing troublesome inquiries. In many parts of New England, it was long regarded as a miracle, and the final disclosure of the secret has spoiled the mystery of a genuine old wives' tale. About three years after this, Whalley gave his soul to God, and was temporarily Boys grew to men, and little girls mar- buried in the cellar, where he had lived a riageable women, while they thus dwelt in death-in-life of fourteen years. Russell was the cellar; and the people of Hadley now in a great fright, and with good reason, passed in and out of their pastor's door, for a new crown officer was at work in New doubled and trebled in number around his England, with a zealous determination to house, and not a soul dreamed that such bring all offenders to justice, and if not the inhabitants lived amongst them. This re-offenders themselves, then somebody instead markable privacy accounts for the histori- of them. Edward Randolph, who has left cal fact, given as a story in "Peveril of a Judge Jeffreys' reputation in America to the Peak."* It occurred during the war this day, was a Jehu for the government, of King Philip, in 1675, the year follow- and his feelings towards the regicides are ing the date of Goffe's letter, and when well touched off by Southey, in the words Whalley must have been far gone in his de- put into his mouth in Oliver Newcline, so that he could not have been the man :". hero, as is so dramatically asserted, by Bridgenorth to Julian Peveril. It was a fast day among the settlers, who were imploring God for deliverance from an expected attack of the savages; and they were all assembled in their rude little meet * Holmes's American Annals, in Ann. Also Notes to "Oliver Newman." "Fifteen years, Alarmed by the energetic measures of such his personal attentions to his friend, appears to have departed from Hadley for a time; while Russell gave currency to a report, that when last seen, he was on his way towards Virginia. It was soon added, that he had been actually recognised in New York, in a farmer's attire, selling cabbages; but he probably went no further than New Haven, where he would naturally visit Dixwell, and so returned to Hadley, whence his last letter bears date, 1679, and where he undoubtedly died the following year. tion which he received of Mr. Davids and "Why dost thou, tyrant, boast abroad, After this, though for forty years the right 66 How the two bodies ever got to New Haven has long been the puzzle It seems that Russell buried Goffe at first in a grave dug partly on his own premises, and partly on those adjoining, intending by this strata-cous blood of a murdered king had been crygem to justify himself, should he ever be ing against him, Dixwell's hoar hairs were forced to deny that the bones were in his suffered to come to the grave in a peace he garden. But, in the years 1680 and 1684, had denied to others, in 1688. Meantime, Randolph's fury being at its height, he that king had lain in his cerements at Windprobably dug up the remains of both the sor, "taken away from the evil to come," regicides, and sent them to New Haven, and undisturbed alike by the malice that where they were interred secretly by Dix- pursued his name, and the far more griewell and the common gravedigger of the vous contempt that fell on his martyrplace. Some suppose, indeed, that they memory from the conduct of his two sons, were not removed till the sad results of the false as they were to his honor, recreant to Duke of Monmouth's rebellion had put the his pure example, and apostate to the holy colonists in terror of the inexorable Jeffreys. faith for which he died. Such sons had at The fate of Lady Alicia Lisle,-herself the last accomplished for the house of Stuart widow of a regicide,-who had suffered for that ruin which other enemies had, in vain, concealing two of the Duke's followers, may endeavored; and two weeks after James very naturally have alarmed the prudent Davids was laid in his grave, came news Russell, and led him to remove all traces of which was almost enough to wake him from his share in harboring Goffe and Whalley. the dead. "The glorious Revolution," as His friendship for two "unjust judges" it is called, was a crowning mercy " to the seems to have led him to dread the acquaint- colonies; and the friends of the late regiance of a third. As for Dixwell, he lived cide now boldly produced his will, and subon in New Haven, maintaining the character mitted it to probate. It devised to his of Mr. James Davids with great respectabi- heirs a considerable estate in England, and lity, and so quietly, that Randolph seems described his own style and title as "John never to have suspected that a third regi- Dixwell, alias James Davids, of the Priory cide was hiding in America. He had one of Folkestone, in the county of Kent, Esnarrow escape, nevertheless, from another quire." zealous partisan of the crown, quite as After my visit to the West Rock, I went lynx-eyed, and even more notorious in in the early twilight to the graves of the American history. In 1685, Sir Edmund three regicides. I found them in the rear Andross paid a visit to New Haven, and was of one of the meeting-houses, in the square, present at the public worship of the inha- very near together, and scarcely noticeable bitants, when James Davids did not fail to in the grass. They are each marked by be in his usual place, nor by his dignity of rough blocks of stone, having one face a person and demeanor to attract the special little smoothed, and rudely lettered. Dixnotice of Sir Edmund, who probably began well's tomb-stone is far better than the to think he had got scent of Goffe himself. others, and bears the fullest and most legiAfter the solemnities were over, he made ble inscription. It is possibly a little more very particular inquiries as to the remarka- than two feet high, of a red sand-stone, ble-looking worshipper, but suffered himself quite thick and heavy, and reads thus:to be diverted from more searching mea- I. D., Esq., deceased March y 18th, in sures, by the natural and unstudied descrip- y' 82 year of his age, 1688-9." To make |
