Regicides on the Run!

The History of the Americans

In May 1660, Oliver Cromwell now dead, Charles II was restored as King of England. The 59 judges who in 1649 had signed the death warrant of the king’s father, Charles I, were declared regicides, and exempted from the general amnesty Charles II offered to most people who had opposed his father. Some of the regicides were caught immediately and most gruesomely executed. Others fled to Europe. Three of them fled to New England. Their names were Edward Whalley, William Goffe, and John Dixwell. This is their story, an epic tale of bounty-hunting across old New England, a tale woven with the anti-Royalist attitude of the Puritans and concern for their status after the Restoration.

And, of course, there is the mysterious “Ghost of Hadley,” a depiction of which is the art for the episode on the website for the podcast.

[Errata: I am reliably informed by New Haveners that I blew the pronunciation of “Whalley,” which apparently is pronounced like the cetacean rather than the diminutive for Walter. Also, I said “Morris” when I meant “Harris” at least once for entirely unknown cognitive reasons.]

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Selected references for this episode

(Commission received on Amazon links, if clicking through the website)

Robert Harris, Act of Oblivion: A Novel

Matthew Jenkinson, Charles I’s Killers in America: The Lives & Afterlives of Edward Whalley & William Goffe

Christopher Pagluico, The Great Escape of Edward Whalley and William Goffe

Edward Elias Atwater, History of the Colony of New Haven Until its Absorption Into Connecticut