Marked men
ANN HUGHES enjoys a myth-busting account of two men who signed Charles I’s death warrant and were forced to flee to the New World when England’s monarchy was restored
In 1675, colonists in the Massachusetts town of Hadley were apparently rescued from indigenous inhabitants during the conflict known to the English as King Philip’s War. In their “utmost confusion”, a “grave elderly person” appeared, inspiring them to drive their enemies away. This “Angel of Hadley” turned out to be William Goffe, an experienced soldier who had taken refuge in New England with his father-in-law, Edward Whalley, in 1660. Both men had signed the death warrant of Charles I and were consequently marked men at the Restoration. Rather than suffer martyrdom, they had boarded a ship for New England only days before Charles II landed in Dover.
Jenkinson’s book seeks to distinguish the actual experiences of Goffe and Whalley in New England from the legends that grew up around them – in books that claimed historical validity, but also in novels, plays, pictures, poems and oral traditions. The story of the ‘Angel of Hadley’ is a rare survivor of Jenkinson’s forensic, sceptical treatment. Although it was first recorded by the governor of Massachusetts Bay some 90 years later, Jenkinson concludes there may be something in it. There is a coherent oral tradition; Whalley and Goffe lived in Hadley from 1664; and Goffe was still alive.
Most of the other stories turn out to be wishful thinking. Whalley’s alleged participation in a rebellion in Virginia is discounted on the grounds that he was already dead, while an account of his life in Maryland is deemed “novel but wholly incorrect”, not least because it required him to live to the age of 103. Jenkinson spends rather too much time debunking the most improbable accounts. His book is more valuable in demonstrating why Whalley and Goffe were such fertile sources for myth-making.
The regicides were most attractive to supporters of the American revolution. They were portrayed as defenders of liberty against tyranny, representing America’s thirst for independence and the essence of its new identity as a nation. This framework was first established by Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College in 1794. It persisted with variations until the Second World War.
In all these accounts, the regicides are portrayed as hunted men, targets of a vengeful
The regicides were portrayed as defenders of liberty, representing America’s thirst for independence and its new identity as a nation
monarch and his colonial lackeys. Hence the ‘tyrant’ George III could be compared to Charles II. Jenkinson’s careful analysis presents a more prosaic, ambiguous reality. There was considerable sympathy for the regicides’ cause in early America, compounded by fears of greater control from England. Colonial governors went through the motions of cooperating with agents who came with warrants for the regicides’ capture to avoid open defiance of English authority, but they were in practice mostly obstructive, while Charles II himself did not pursue revenge for long. Jenkinson concludes that Goffe and Whalley were only briefly in “real danger”, when they sought shelter for up to three months in a remote cave in 1661. Rather, they led restricted and uncomfortable lives in New England, before both died undramatically in borrowed beds.