The streets of London were filled with joy and excitement throughout April and May 1660. People gossiped and bustled to and fro as ecstatic rumours broke through the stifling atmosphere of uncertainty that had plagued the previous few months. The monarchy, abolished since 1649, was to be restored, and Charles II would be the new king. The “Merry Monarch,” as he would come to be known, was soon to ascend the throne, bringing an end to the dour Cromwellian years and ushering in a new age of glamour and hope. But beneath the surface, a remorseless desire for revenge simmered, having festered for several years. Charles II, despite his moderate rhetoric in the Declaration of Breda, had neither forgotten nor forgiven his father’s principal enemies. The Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, passed in August 1660, outlined those who would not qualify for the king’s forgiveness, leading to a brutal reckoning and manhunts that spread as far as America.
On 30 January 1649, King Charles I of England was executed for “high treason and other high crimes.” Charles was essentially being blamed for causing two civil wars. The first, lasting from 1642 to 1646, had ended with his imprisonment, but the second, in 1648, proved to be his undoing. His duplicity in negotiations with Parliament and his perceived role in reigniting hostilities prompted the New Model Army, the professional military force that had defeated the Royalists, to bring him to trial. Parliament was purged of members sympathetic to the king, forming what became known as the Rump Parliament.
Within days, the Rump Parliament passed a bill establishing an ad hoc High Court of Justice, originally intended to comprise three judges and 150 commissioners. However, only 68 individuals sat in judgment. The legality of this court was highly questionable; while it was called an Act, it had not been passed by the House of Lords, had only been voted on by a reduced Commons, and obviously lacked royal assent. Nevertheless, the court proceeded under the presidency of John Bradshaw, and by 27 January, it had decided Charles’s fate. Fifty-nine commissioners signed the king’s death warrant, and on 30 January 1649, Charles I was beheaded.
The records of the trial and proceedings, compiled by commissioner William Say and submitted to Parliament in December 1650, would later prove crucial to Charles II’s retribution. By the time of the Restoration in 1660, only 38 of the 59 signatories of Charles I’s death warrant were still alive. Thirteen were executed (including four posthumous executions), while sixteen were imprisoned for life.
The first regicide to be tried and condemned was Major-General Thomas Harrison. Once a powerful soldier and religious radical, second only to Oliver Cromwell, Harrison had withdrawn into relative obscurity in Newcastle-under-Lyme by 1660. He was apprehended, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and tried for treason in October. The inevitable verdict was death by hanging, drawing, and quartering, a gruesome execution carried out on 13 October.
Unsurprisingly, the prospect of such a fate drove other regicides to flee abroad. Three of the signatories—Edward Whalley, William Goffe, and John Dixwell—escaped to America. Realizing they faced a short and grim future in England, Whalley and Goffe boarded a ship, the *Prudent Mary*, on 13 May 1660, bound for Boston.
Whalley had family connections in America; his sister had married William Hooke, who had lived in Massachusetts and New Haven and was friends with Connecticut’s governor, John Winthrop. He was also acquainted with Richard Saltonstall, an influential figure in Massachusetts. Upon arriving, Whalley and Goffe reported themselves to John Endecott, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Endecott, a staunch Puritan, was sympathetic to their plight, though he was careful not to directly defy Charles II’s authority.
Captain Daniel Gookin, a member of the General Court governing Massachusetts, sheltered Whalley and Goffe at his home in Cambridge, New England, until late July 1660. As pressure from England mounted, the two regicides moved between different safe houses, often aided by sympathizers within the Puritan communities. They spent time in New Haven and later took refuge in a cave near Hadley, Massachusetts.
Unlike Whalley and Goffe, Dixwell initially fled to mainland Europe, living in Germany and Switzerland before sailing to New England in 1665. In his case, no arrest warrant was issued, as Charles II’s agents had lost track of him and assumed he had died. Dixwell successfully concealed his identity, living under the alias James Davids. He briefly stayed with Whalley and Goffe in Hadley in 1665, but his movements for the next eight years remain largely unknown.
Dixwell resurfaced in 1673 as a respected merchant in New Haven. He lodged with Benjamin and Joanna Ling, possibly from 1670. After Benjamin Ling’s death in April 1673, Dixwell married Joanna in November, though she passed away the following month, leaving him an estate worth £900. In October 1677, he married Bathsheba Howe, with whom he had three children.
Though he lived discreetly, Dixwell was nearly exposed in 1686 when the ardent royalist and governor of New England, Sir Edmund Andros, attended a church service where he was present. However, Andros failed to recognize him. Throughout his life in America, Dixwell maintained contact with his niece, Elizabeth Westrow, in London. He died in March 1689, his true identity remaining somewhat ambiguous even in death; his gravestone simply bore the initials “J.D. Esq.” Of the 59 regicides, Dixwell was perhaps the most successful in avoiding retribution.
Whatever one’s opinion of the regicides and their cause, the fact that Dixwell, Whalley, and Goffe survived at all is a testament to their personal resilience. Their escape, made possible by sympathetic American colonists, may also hint at an emerging political culture that would, in the following century, drive the War of Independence. The regicides’ American refuge suggests that, even in the 1600s, some settlers viewed authority from across the Atlantic with skepticism, a sentiment that would later shape the founding principles of the United States.
