[21] Dixwell died and lies buried in Newhaven. His grave is visited by the Sober Dissenters with great reverence and veneration; nay, even held sacred as the tomb at Mecca. Here are buried also the children of Colonel Jones, and many other rebels.
[22] An affair had happened at New Haven, a few months before this, which now began to alarm the country, and soon gave great anxiety and trouble to the colony.
Very soon after the restoration, a large number of judges of King Charles I., commonly termed regicides, were apprehended and brought upon their trials in the Old Bailey. Thirty-nine were condemned, and ten executed as traitors. Some others, apprehensive of danger, fled out of the kingdom before King Charles II. was proclaimed. Colonels Whalley and Goffe made their escape to New England.
They were brought over by one Captain Gooking, and arrived in Boston in July, 1660. Governor Endicott, and gentlemen of character in Boston and its vicinity, treated them with peculiar respect and kindness. They were gentlemen of singular abilities, and had moved in an exalted sphere. Whalley had been a lieutenant-general, and Goffe a major-general, in Cromwell’s army. Their manners and appearance commanded universal respect. They soon went from Boston to Cambridge, where they resided until February. They resorted openly to places of public worship on the Lord’s-day, and at other times of public devotion. They were universally esteemed by all men of character, both civil and religious. But no sooner was it known that the judges had been condemned as traitors, and that these gentlemen were excepted from the act of pardon, than the principal gentlemen in the Massachusetts began to be alarmed.
Governor Endicott called a court of magistrates to consult measures for apprehending them. However, their friends were so numerous that a vote could not at that time be obtained to arrest them. Some of the court declared that they would stand by them; others advised them to move out of the colony.
Finding themselves unsafe at Cambridge, they came, by the assistance of their friends, to Connecticut. They made their route by Hartford, and went directly to New Haven. They arrived about the 27th of March, and made Mr. Davenport’s house the place of their residence.
They were treated with the same marks of esteem and generous friendship at New Haven which they had received in Massachusetts. The more the people became acquainted with them the more they esteemed them, not only as men of great minds, but of unfeigned piety and religion. For some time they appeared to apprehend themselves as out of danger, and happily situated among a number of pious and agreeable friends. But it was not long before the news of the king’s proclamation against the regicides arrived, requiring that, wherever they might be found, they should be immediately apprehended. The Governor of Massachusetts, in consequence of the royal proclamation, issued his warrant to arrest them. As they were informed by their friends of all measures adopted respecting them, they removed to Milford. There they appeared openly in daytime, but at night often returned privately to New Haven, and were generally secreted at Mr. Davenport’s, until about the last of April.
In the mean time, the Governor of Massachusetts received a royal mandate requiring him to apprehend them; and a more full circumstantial account of the condemnation and the execution of the ten regicides, and of the disposition of the Court toward them, and the republicans and Puritans in general, arrived in New England.
This gave a more general and thorough alarm to the whole country.
A feigned search had been made in the Massachusetts, in consequence of the former warrant, for the Colonels Whalley and Goffe; but now the Governor and magistrates began to view the affair in a more serious point of light, and appear to have been in earnest to secure them. They perceived that their own personal safety and the liberties and peace of the country were concerned in the manner of their conduct toward these unhappy men. They therefore immediately gave a commission to Thomas Kellond and Thomas Kirk, two zealous young royalists, to go through the colonies as far as Manhadoes, and make a careful and universal search for them. They pursued the judges to Hartford, and, repairing to Governor Winthrop’s, were nobly entertained.