USA > Connecticut > The history of Connecticut, from the first settlement of the colony to the adoption of the present constitution, vol. I > Part 20
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* For a full account of the restoration and of the character of Charles II., con- sult Camden's "Imperial History of England," chapters vi and vii. This noble work is so difficult to be had, that few but the learned can have access to it. Whoever among our American publishers has the courage to furnish the public with a cheap edition of it, will be doubly paid-in the consciousness of having done a benevolent act, and in the pleasant personal experience of having added to his pecuniary resources.
EZRA STILES, S.T.D. LL.D. President of Yale College from 1777 to 1795.
Sara Stiles
235
JUDGES EXECUTED IN ENGLAND.
[1660.]
quis to that of a duke, and made him steward of the household ; while the earl of Southampton was appointed high treasurer .*
Policy, doubtless, held with gratitude a divided empire in the king's breast ; but he is entitled to the credit of following good advice at first, whatever may have been the follies and debaucheries that afterwards made his court so shamefully eminent.
The commons were disposed to have past offences forgot- ten, but the lords were not so easily pacified. In relation to the unhappy men who had sat in judgment upon the king's father, and who were called then, as they still are, regicides, the lords were especially intolerant, and encouraged the king to except every one of them from the general pardon. Thus advised, the willing monarch, almost as soon as he had seated himself firmly upon the throne of his ancestors, issued a proclamation announcing that such of the judges of Charles I. as did not within fourteen days, surrender themselves up as prisoners, should receive no pardon. Of course great alarm was awakened in the hearts of the regicides and of their friends by this announcement. Nineteen delivered them- selves up, and awaited the event with the deepest anxiety. Others fled, and were fortunate enough to elude pursuit and escape beyond the seas; and others were arrested in their flight. Ten of these unhappy men, whose worst crime-if they were guilty of any-was, that they partook too deeply of the same maddening cup that turned even the philosophic brain of Milton, were executed, and the remains of some of the principal actors in that too fearful tragedy, were treated with profane indignities, such as have not since that day dis- graced the name of English freedom.t Two of these, Ed- ward Whalley and William Goffe, arrived in Boston in July, 1660. John Dixwell came afterwards.
* Camden's Imperial Hist. of Eng., 216.
t The judges who were executed were Harrison, Scot, Scrope, Jones, Cle- ments, and Carew ; besides Cook, the solicitor ; Hugh Peters, the chaplain ; and Hacker and Axtell, who commanded the guard. The bones of Cromwell, Brad- shaw, Ireton and Pride, were dug up, hanged at Tyburn, and then buried be- neath the gallows! Camden, p. 217; Wade, p. 222.
236
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
As it was not known at that time what disposition would be made of them, and as it was believed that they would be em- braced in the general act of indemnity, they were treated by Governor Endicott and the other principal gentlemen of Bos- ton, with all the marks of respect that were thought to be- long to men who had filled high places in the government, and whose venerable features and soldierly bearing com- ported so well with their high reputation, as eminent civilians and military leaders. They were constantly entertained at the houses of the more opulent, and from the curiosity that their presence awakened in the public mind, all their move- ments were watched with a lively interest. They soon went to Cambridge, where they stayed until February. While there, they openly attended upon public worship on the Sab- bath and on other days, and made no effort to diguise from the people who and what they were.
As soon, however, as it was made known in Boston in what light the king looked upon the official conduct of these men, and that they were regarded as traitors, a large share of those who had claimed to be their friends, avoided them as if they had been infected with some contagious disease.
Finding the indulgence and favor of the authorities of Massachusetts thus suddenly turned into loyality, and learn- ing that instead of caressing them, Endicott had called a court of magistrates to apprehend them and deliver them over to the executioner, they took advantage of the friendly disposition manifested towards them by some of the magis- trates and fled out of the jurisdiction of that colony, and sought a refuge in New Haven among the old and tried ad- herents of Oliver Cromwell. They passed through Hartford on their way and arrived in New Haven on the 27th of March 1661, where they were received by Davenport with open arms. Davenport entertained them at his house with the most kindly hospitality. They here found themselves among congenial spirits, and went fearlessly from house to house and discoursed freely of the thrilling incidents that had been crowded into their lives, and could be reproduced at
237
THE ROYAL MANDATE ARRIVES.
[1661.]
will, divested of their more forbidding outlines, as the painter can choose the colors that best represent to his eye the image that floats, soul-like, in the atmosphere of his mental vision. The sieges of strong castles, the busy scenes and earnest fears that lent their haggard expression to the fires that lit up the camp of civil war; the awful details of the battle of Dun- bar, that seem still to speak in the tides of the German ocean as they dash against the rocky coast; the imprisonment of Charles I. at Hampton court; his escape from the hands of Whalley; his subsequent captivity ; his uncompromising silence when brought to trial by his subjects; his heroic death; the stern and vigorous policy that followed that event; in short, all the doublings and windings of a self-de- luding ambition, exemplified in the life of Cromwell, from the humble pleasures of agriculture to the magnificent funeral in Westminster Abbey, afforded them an inexhaustible theme for conversation and reflection. They were grave, sedate men, and bore themselves with a noble self-control and a manly cheerfulness that bespoke no secret upbraidings of conscience. It does not appear that they ever felt any such accusations or entertained a doubt as to the part that they had taken in the transactions that preceded or followed the king's death.
Meanwhile the royal mandate reached Massachusetts, re- quiring the governor to arrest the fugitives. With this requisition, came a detailed account of the death of ten of the regicides, and of the disposition of the court towards those who entertained the survivors who were excluded from the act of indemnity. The governor and magistrates began to be seriously alarmed. They had already made a feigned search for the exiles, and failed to find them, as it was ex- pected that they would do when they began. But now they thought it best to evince their loyality in earnest. They therefore responded to the requisition by giving to two zeal- ous young royalists, Thomas Kellond and Thomas Kirk, a commission in the nature of a special deputation, authorizing them to go through the colonies as far as Manhattan, and
238
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
search for Whalley and Goffe with diligence .* If they found them they were ordered to arrest them. Armed with this paper, and stimulated with the prospects of promotion that they counted on as certain to crown their success, these ambitious pursuivants eagerly started in quest of the alluring game.
They hastened to Hartford and waited upon Governor Winthrop, who, as they afterwards made report, nobly en- tertained them; and, as he knew that the judges were not within his jurisdiction, he very readily gave a warrant to Kellond and Kirk to apprehend them within the limits of Connecticut. Winthrop appeared to be quite earnest in the cause, but he assured them that " the colonels made no stay in Connecticut, but went directly to New Haven."
The pursuers took leave of the governor and repaired to the colony of New Haven with all dispatch. The next day they reached Guilford, where they stopped to provide them- selves with a new warrant; for deputy Governor Leete resided there, who was then the acting governor.
They soon made Leete acquainted with the object of their visit, and informed him that they had good cause to believe that Whalley and Goffe were then at New Haven. They begged him to give them a warrant similar to that furnished them by Governor Winthrop, and to provide them with horses to speed them upon their journey and men to help them to make the arrest. The governor appeared to be much surprised at this request. He had not seen the colonels, he said, in nine weeks, and he did not believe they were at New Haven. He took the papers from the hands of the pursuivants and began to read them aloud, in a tone so alarmingly audible that their loyalty was shocked,
* This is the form of the statement made by Stiles, Trumbull, and other author- ities, and the mandate from the king unquestionably ordered the arrest of the fugitives wherever they might be found. The governor and council of Massachu- setts, however, evidently had no authority to commission Kellond and Kirk to extend their researches beyond their own jurisdiction. That this was so under- stood by the pursuivants themselves, is evinced by their applying to the governors of Connecticut and New Haven for powers to enable them to prosecute the object of their mission in those colonies.
239
PURSUIVANTS ARRIVE AT GUILFORD.
[1661.]
and they were obliged to interrupt him, and let him know that "it was convenient to be more private in such concern- ments as that was." He delayed to furnish them with horses in season, so that they could pursue their journey that night. The next day was the Sabbath, and they were obliged to wait in Guilford until Monday morning, the 13th, at daybreak,*
If the account that they afterwards gave of the matter is true, (and they gave it under oath,) an Indian was sent to New Haven in the night, and no difficulty was found in procuring a horse for one John Meigs, who set out for New Haven long before day, and heralded their approach with most untimely haste. Governor Leete positively refused to issue any warrant or send men to assist in making the arrest, until he had consulted the magistrates. In order to do this, it was necessary that he should go to New Haven. A wearisome Sunday the pursuers must have made of it. It is quite likely that the Indian spoken of in their report to Governor Endicott was sent off on Saturday evening to give the alarm to Mr. Davenport, who on Sunday would have a favorable opportunity to inform the people and put them on their guard. Indeed, this accords so well with the statement of Stiles that I can not entertain much doubt that such was the fact.t
* See Stiles, Trumbull, and Bacon.
+ The more I read President Stiles' History of the three judges, the more I am induced to trust myself to him as an authority. His diligence in searching out details and traditionary evidence is almost without a parallel, and I find that most of his conclusions stand the severest test. He tells us that " about the time the pursuers came to New Haven, and perhaps a little before, and to prepare the minds of the people for their reception, the Rev. Mr. Davenport preached publicly from Isaiah xvi. 3, 4." Now if the report of Kellond and Kirk is correct, that they reached Guilford on the 11th and New Haven on the 13th, and if the 12th was Sunday, which, as Dr. Bacon says, is "found to be true by actual calcula- tion," what time could have been more suitable than that 12th of May for the preaching of such a discourse ? The pursuivants must therefore have spent two nights and one day at Guilford, and to make sure that Mr. Davenport had notice of their coming, Meigs, the second messenger, was probably sent off before day- break on Monday morning.
240
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
At beat of drum the worshipers assembled as usual to listen to the teachings of their patriarch. The alarming in- telligence that the pursuers were near, was probably whis- pered at the outer door of the meeting-house, in the ears of some of the principal men, if indeed it did not interrupt for a moment the grave tranquillity of the puritan Sabbath as it circulated among the people as they met. However, they would soon become composed-hushed, indeed, as statues long before the presence of the Supreme God was invoked. From what we know of the earnest character of the audi- tory, we may safely conclude that the silence of death reigned throughout the humble edifice, and that all eyes were fastened upon the face of the speaker-all ears thrilled to the tones of his voice, as he gave out his text from the XVIth chapter of Isaiah, verses 3 and 4: "Take counsel, execute judgment, make thy shadow as the night in the midst of noon-day; 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."
I have not found upon the pages of history, a better ex- ample of moral courage thwarting the purposes of vindictive power, than the one afforded by this brave old clergyman upon the remote confines of the British empire calling upon the subjects of that empire who were gathered around him, to resist for the sake of mercy, the vengeance of their king.
Kellond and Kirk, as early on Monday morning as they found it practicable, rode into New Haven. They were not received with much cordiality by the inhabitants. In mo- mentary expectation of the arrival of Governor Leete, they were obliged to wait about two hours before his excellency came. They then again pressed their demand for a warrant, as they said they had received information that convinced them that the regicides were still in New Haven. The gov- ernor said he did not believe they were in New Haven. The young gentlemen then begged that he would empower them to arrest the judges or order others to do it. Leete replied, that " he could not and would not make them magis-
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241
PURSUIVANTS IN NEW HAVEN.
[1661.]
trates." They then said if he would enable them to do it, they would themselves make search in two houses where they had reason to suppose that the regicides lay hid. The governor then told them that he could take no steps in the matter until he had called the freemen together.
The pursuivants were very much exasperated, and set before him in a strong light the dangers that he was bringing upon himself and upon the colony of New Haven by his delay. They further told him, that they did not doubt, from his reluctance to aid in the arrest, he was willing that the traitors should escape. This remark seemed to make an impression upon him, for he soon after convened the magis- trates and remained in consultation with them-so weighty was the business-for a period of five or six hours. The council at length came to the conclusion that it was neces- sary to call a general court. Again the pursuers remonstra- ted. They reminded the governor how striking was the contrast between his conduct and that of the governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut, who, with the alacrity of faithful subjects, had hastened to issue their warrants in obe- dience to the king's mandate ; they warned him against the horrible crime of aiding and abetting traitors and regicides, and ended by putting to him the pertinent question, "whether he would obey the king or no in this affair." " We honor his majesty," replied Leete, "but we have tender con- sciences." Enraged at this answer, the young men told him that they believed he knew where the outlaws were. This remark, implying a charge of high treason, led the governor and magistrates into another long consultation, that lasted two or three hours.
In the evening, Leete came to the head of the stairs of the little inn where the applicants lodged, and taking one of them by the hand, told him with the greatest simplicity of manner, that "he wished he had been a plowman, and had never been in office, since he found it so weighty."
"Will you own his majesty or no?" asked the pur- suivants.
16
242
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
" We would first know whether his majesty would own us," was the guarded answer.
Thus baffled by the authorities and overawed by the people, Kellond and Kirk hastened out of the colony of New Haven without having dared to search a solitary house. They repaired to Manhadoes, where Stuyvesant received them with great politeness, and promised to aid them in arresting the fugitives if they could be found in his jurisdic- tion. Soon after, they went back to Boston *
Let us now return to the exiles. It is quite probable that they were at the house of Mr. Davenport until Saturday night, (the 11th of May,) when the Indian messenger arrived from Guilford, for it appears that they fled from the town that night, and spent at least a part of it at a mill situated in the woods two miles north-west of New Haven. Here they lay concealed until the 13th, when Mr. Jones with Burrill and Sperry visited them, and, probably while those protracted consultations were going on at New Haven between the governor and the magistrates, conducted them to the house of Sperry, still another mile farther off from New Haven. They here provided them a place that has ever since been called " Hatchet Harbor," where they lodged two nights, and on the 15th of the montht went to a cave upon the moun- tain called by them Providence Hill, but since known as West Rock, as the cave that sheltered the regicides still bears the name of " Judges' Cave." Upon the very summit of this mountain, and towering about twenty feet above it, on a base not more than forty feet square, stood an irregular cluster of pillars of trap-rock like a clump of trees. They had been upheaved in some strong convulsion of nature, and seemed very properly to typify the fiery billows of revolu- tion that had drifted those sorrow-stricken men to take refuge from the strength of the returning surf by clinging to their gray sides. These rocks, at some distance from
* A copy of the official report of Kellond and Kirk may be found in Stiles' His- tory of the Judges, pp. 52, 56. It bears date "Boston, May 29, 1661."
+ This is the date as given in Goffe's Journal ; see Stiles, p. 77.
243
[1661.] THE JUDGES FRIGHTENED FROM THE CAVE.
each other upon the ground, slanted inwards towards a com- mon center at the top, thus forming an irregular chamber, that could, by closing the outer apertures with the boughs of trees, be made habitable but not comfortable for two or three persons .* In this forbidding spot, with no companions but the wild animals, whose voices startled them from their sleep at night, and surrounded by such forest trees as could find a footing in the barren soil, they lived until the 11th of June.t Sperry sometimes carried them food himself, and sometimes sent one of his sons, who left it upon the stump of a tree that was pointed out to him, and who, with the superstitious wonder of childhood, in vain demanded of his father why the basins that he had carried there filled with provisions were found empty at his next visit, and why he was sent upon this mysterious errand.
" There is somebody at work in the woods who wants the food," was the unsatisfactory reply.
This desolate mountain was, as I have said, the haunt of wild beasts. One night, as the regicides lay in bed, they saw a panther or catamount thrust its head into the mouth of the cave. Its blazing eyeballs and unearthly cry so frightened the inmates, that one of them fled down the mountain to Sperry's house, where he gave the alarm. This intruder, terrible to men who had proved themselves to possess true courage when man meets man upon the battle-field, drove them from the cave.}
It is impossible that I should follow these outlawed men in all their painful wanderings to elude the vigilance of their pursuers. Tradition still points out many places along the coast where they lingered, sometimes for a night and some- times for a longer period, as best accorded with their real or fancied security. Sometimes they appear to have been alarmed for the safety of those who had protected them, and rather than bring them into difficulty, they resolved more
* An engraved view of the "Judges' Caves" may be found in Barber's Hist. Coll. of Conn., p. 151.
t Goffe's Journal. # Stiles, p. 75.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
than once to surrender themselves, and would have done so but for the solicitations of those in whose behalf they pro- posed to make the sacrifice.
Some time between the 11th of June, when they left the cave, and the 20th of the same month, they went to Guil- ford with a view of delivering themselves up to Governor Leete. The walls of the cellar are still standing, and may be expected to last another hundred years, where tradition informs us that they lodged, unseen by the governor though fed from his table, while the negotiations relative to their submission were going on. It appears that they desired to yield themselves up in order to save Mr. Davenport, who resisted it with his usual fearlessness and magnanimity. Endicott, who had dared to cut the cross from the king's banner, quailed before the royal mandate. Davenport alone remained,
" Like Teneriffe or Atlas, unremoved."
While at Guilford, the regicides also lodged at the house of Mr. Rossiter.
From their various retreats in the woods they repaired to the house of a Mr. Tompkins in Milford. In this house they remained in the most perfect concealment for two years. They had a private room devoted to them, and did not so much as venture to walk out into the orchard. The honorable Robert Treat, Benjamin Fenn, and the clergy- man, Mr. Roger Newton, were in the secret, often visited them, and afforded them such consolation and support as their forlorn situation demanded. The manly, sympathetic nature of Robert Treat needed only to know that they were friendless and sorrowful. A single grasp of his hand, a glance at his gallant face, was enough to assure the regicides that their secrets were safely lodged with him.
We are not to infer from the solitude and the dangers . that all the while threatened the regicides, that they were the victims of moping melancholy. On the other hand, though they behaved with a dignity worthy of their former position, they beguiled the time not only with pleasant
245
THE JUDGES REMOVE TO HADLEY.
[1664.]
conversation, but often with that gamesome merriment that is so strangely allied to misery. During their stay at Mil- ford, there was brought over from England a ballad written by some hair-brained cavalier rhymer, placing the regicides in such a ludicrous light that a loyalist might be excused for laughing or a puritan for biting his lip at the recital of it. This ballad, a girl who was an inmate of Mr. Tompkins' family, or who was in the habit of visiting the house, had com- mitted to memory and had learned to sing it, which she happened to do in the chamber above the room occupied by the judges. They were so delighted with the song that they used to beg their host to have it repeated by the young ladies of the family, who little knew what an interested auditory had been provided for them .*
On the arrival of the commissioners in 1664, and when it became known that they were charged among other things with the arrest of the judges, their friends were again alarmed for their safety, and it was thought best that they should leave Milford for some new place of concealment. Accordingly, on the 13th of October, 1664, they set out for Hadley, then a frontier town in Massachusetts, a hundred miles from Milford, and so remote from Boston, Hartford and New Haven, that it did not seem probable that their presence in such a place would be suspected. They traveled only by night, and lay still during the day in some shady nook in the woods, or by the bank of a brook where the murmuring of the water invited them to repose. These stopping-places they called Harbors. The locality of one of them is still pointed out at the now flourishing village of Meriden, that yet retains the name of Pilgrim's Harbor. They reached Hadley in safety, and there they were secreted in the house of the Rev. John Russell, in a secret chamber, probably until they died. They kept a diary of the most minute events that transpired, probably more to amuse them- selves than for any historical purpose. This journal was in
* See Stiles, whose facts and dates I have generally followed in tracing the history of the judges after their arrival in New England.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
the handwriting of Goffe. Indeed, Whalley became infirm not long after his removal to Hadley, and from what I can glean from the tender expressions in regard to him that I find in Goffe's letters, I have no doubt that he became de- mented some time before his death, that is supposed to have happened in the year 1678.
Noble tells us that the Whalleys are of great antiquity. They were a very proud family, and were royalists. Upon the breaking out of the civil wars, Edward Whalley, who had been brought up to merchandise, in opposition to the wishes of his family took up arms in behalf of the people. At the battle of Naseby, in 1645, he fought with unparalleled bravery. He charged and defeated two divisions of Lang- dale's horse, supported as they were by that fiery cavalier, Prince Rupert, who commanded the reserve. For his heroic bravery on that occasion, he was made by the parliament a colonel of horse. He also commanded the horse at the siege of Bristol, when Prince Rupert surrendered up the city .* He was never popular with the more fanatical of the Inde- pendents, who hated him for his aristocratic bearing, and envied him for his success. At the head of his accusers was that wolfish radical, Hugh Peters, who charged him with being a Presbyterian-a compliment that Whalley threatened to reciprocate by caning him.t
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