regicide-redux-blog

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navigating my navigation

These posts present themselves in reverse chronological oder. They are sorted into four categories: #rumination, #research, #real-time, #reflection

I recommend reading the posts chronologically, bottom to top. Click on the search button in the top left and paste one of the hashtags to view all of the posts in a particular category. 

There are five main during-travel entries, each bifurcated into a “journal” section and an “afterimage” section. 

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references

Find my list of works cited below. 

The regicides. 1847. The Yale Literary Magazine.Conducted by the Students of Yale University (1836-1851) 12 (6): 274.

The cave of the regicides; and how three of them fared in new england. 1847. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. March.

Brockett, John. 1641. Brockett map of 1641. New Haven: The Whitney Library, New Haven Museum.

Davenport, John. 1937. Letters of john davenport, puritan divine, ed. Isabel MacBeath Calder. 1st ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Noble, Mark. 1798. The lives of the english regicides, and other commissioners of the pretended high court of justice, appointed to sit in judgment upon their sovereign, king charles the first. by the reverend mark noble, ... in two volumes. ... Vol. 1. London: printed for John Stockdale, 

Pagliuco, Christopher. 2012. The great escape of edward whalley and william goffe : Smuggled through connecticut. Charleston, SC: History Press.

ROBINS, ROBERT PATTERSON. 1877. Edward whalley, the regicide: The will of edward whalley, the regicide. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (1877-1906) 1 (1): 55.

Sidney, Margaret. 1899. The judges' cave; being a romance of the new haven colony in the days of the regicides, 1661. Boston: Lothrop publishing company.

Stiles, Ezra. 1794. A history of three of the judges of king charles I: Major-general whalley, major-general goffe, and colonel dixwell: Who, at the restoration, 1660, fled to america; and were secreted and concealed, in massachusetts and connecticut, for near thirty years: With an account of mr. theophilus whale, of narragansett, supposed to have been also one of the judges. Hartford: Elisha Babcock.

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VISIONBOARD

As I marinated in this project, more and more moments in my life seemed to spiral toward it. Here’s a collection of some of the people, books, TV shows, and movies that have inspired the way I’ve thought about this project.

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archive five

The other book I checked out from the Beinecke was somehow even more exciting. It was delivered to me like a present, complete with its own white bow (the front cover has completely detached from the spine. After unknotting it, I opened up perhaps the most gorgeous first page of a book I’ve ever seen.

More exciting than the design, though, was the writing. I was reading the “History of three of the judges of King Charles I,” by none other than Yale president Ezra Stiles. His emplacement as an American patriot and staunch Congregationalist, comparable to Puritanism, explains how he reaches vastly different conclusions than his contemporary Mark Noble.

Stiles dedicates the majority of the book to a nuanced “justification of the judges”; from the onset, it’s clear he idolizes their commitment to their cause (4).

There are also just a lot of juicy details that have helped to populate that time period in my mind’s eye. For instance, Stiles recounts that Mayor Davenport preached to his congregation about “betraying not him that wandereth” as he housed the regicides (32) Stiles emphasized that Davenport won the sympathy of most locals for Whalley and Goffe’s cause. This became important when police messengers from England arrived. They interrogated both colonists and Native Americans, yet failed to glean the locales of the judges. 

Stiles also revealed that Whalley and Goffe returned to the cave in 1664, two years after their initial two-month stay (26). The fact that they came back adds a ritualistic undertone to the landscape, at least in my hopeful interpretation.

Maybe even more exciting than the writing, though, were the insets! I had been looking for an exact map of Whalley and Goffe’s route, as well as one with a 1660s map of New Haven (the one I referenced earlier was from the ‘40s). Suddenly, here they were!

It was heartening to see many of the same landmarks, including Beaver Pond, where I stopped to write my second real-time entry of the day. 

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archive four

In the century following Whalley & Goffe’s hijinks, their story was subject to a variety of interpretations. Mark Noble, a Brit beholden to the Crown, wrote a two-volume series of vignettes on “The Lives of the English Regicides” that now rests in the annals of the Beinecke Rare Books Library. I had the pleasure of checking it (and a contemporary to be explicated in a following post) out, laying a weighted sock across its pages, and perusing its profiles.

According to Noble, although Edward Whalley was “descended of a very ancient and respectable family in Nottinghamshire,” Whalley’s decision to spy on the King, commit regicide, and look “for some visible manifestation offered to evince to all that it was a great, a good, and glorious act to commit one of the most detestable murders that stains the page of Christian history” qualified him as certifiably mad, “under powerful delusions” (327-329). 

What’s more, Noble scoffs at Whalley’s decision to secret away in the cave. “Even royalty itself must feel commiseration for the humiliating and apprehensive torture in which [Whalley and Goffe] lingered out their existence,” he said, referring to their experience as being “literally buried alive in a cave” (328). 

This is a provocative take on people who, from a historically American perspective, were lauded as fighters against tyranny. Ignoring Noble’s ignorance to the specific fates of the regicides (at the time of his writing, it was still not common knowledge that Whalley and Goffe escaped, post-cave, to a town in Massachusetts, so Noble assumed they “lingered out their existence” in nature), his biases can be understood. The profile reads as propaganda for the current ruling monarchs--a vindication that, in the end, the devious regicides got their just desserts. 

What’s compelling to me about this account is the way it unintentionally points to Whalley and Goffe’s success. They succeeded in disappearing themselves from the face of the earth (a select few notwithstanding) for more than one hundred years. That is just so cool! 

Noble’s most clairvoyant observation transpires when he calls their state as a “wild solitude” (328). This image evokes the danger and magic of hermeticism, a guise that the pair bent towards, perhaps would have willingly adopted. 

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part five / in the cave

Journal

Then Whalley and Goffe appeared. Cracking jokes. Climbing to the apex of their refuge. High school guys. One leading the other. “Don’t feel pressured to do this if you don’t want to,” he says, gangly, clambering to the top, showing the way. But he might have said it about something else.

They make each other laugh so much. One is blond, messy curly hair, talking about high school work, no hair on legs, white, too-long socks. The other, blue-striped shirt, nearly-cropped fade, skin the color of sun-soaked bark. They are smart; maybe not in love. But this is their refuge nonetheless. Reincarnation—“Transparent” and “Cloud Atlas” made me aware of it. Does it recall Plymouth Rock?

They have to keep adjusting their hands to find grips in the rock—they look like they’re at a movie theater together, happy nervous. They have a shared high school canon—rustling papers recall quiet bullets—and it seems infinitely plumbable, at least per moment. “I was in the gym class when she broke her leg” / “He has a bald spot!

I leave them to finish their session. Their refuge, not mine. Caught in a time, not different. I had always seen myself as Whalley, or Goffe, or maybe both. Each foot doubled, two somehow making four. Instead, I may be the king’s man, a royalist, or Charles II, born in Europe. Part of him must go overseas.

Afterimage

I went into this trip with a magical realist’s mindset. Reincarnation, multiple selves, transcending time--the works. But as I say in the journal entry, “I had always seen myself as Whalley or Goffe.” But when, after hanging out in the cave for a while, two just-past-tweenage boys jogged up to the rock, I was granted the opportunity to reconsider. 

I came out as gay in junior year of high school. Although the concept of a gaydar is inherently problematic, I do have a fairly accurate one. What I saw here was two young men, happy to be in each other’s company, maybe starting to wonder if they wanted more. At least one of them came here often--both do, I think, if my eavesdropping proved accurate. The cave was a constant, a refuge for Whalley and Goffe. Now it is for them as well. That’s the sort of reincarnation I can get behind.

After a few hours, more guests and more thinking, I left the cave and began the walk back to New Haven. Whalley and Goffe (the real ones) didn’t get that luxury. They had to maintain their secrecy--they were still wanted men. It’s a shame--my walk back was cathartic in ways that they might have needed more than I. 

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part four / on the cave

Journal

Warmth brings communion, but the rocks weren’t as warm as I expected. Someone my live here. Who lived here, throughout the eons? Geologic mysteries breed historical secrecies. I am fully prostrate on this rock, mocking them in their serious hideaway, balls to boulder like nobody’s business. I could sleep here, get hot here.

The fadings and washings on the rock look like soap stains. What cycle is the washing machine tuned to? First my bottom, then my top lip rubs on stone. The sensuality of the cave is a surprise. No lies, fireflies shaded by shale cast shadows moving almost as fast as the stars. Who do they think they are?

Using the law, then running from it. They rode the pendulum of history so tangibly…I listened to these rocks in the middle of the woods, but they didn’t make a sound. There really isn’t anyone around. I feel safe.

But I am l lying above the rocks, on their faces. Why won’t I go in their face? I am afraid they could collapse. After all these years. The poetry of it would make it so, oh, Lönnrot. What if I turn invisible. My travel captured by history. Capture

Afterimage

After I reached the cave, no one else came in the vicinity for about an hour. Having the space to myself, to meditate on the journey and the place I was in, was a blessing. I lay on one of the boulders and closed my eyes, happy to be in such a tranquil landscape. 

I’ll admit it--I was sort of hoping to open my eyes and find myself in the 17th century. That would have been such a laughably explicit form of magic, but I willed it anyway. I even told my friend about this hope before coming--she suggested I drop acid. I thanked her for the advice. I didn’t want to need a drug to transcend time. 

I opened my eyes and I was still in present day. What a shock. I encouraged my mind to nonetheless drift toward the past--mine and theirs. In the moment, I said that Whalley and Goffe “rode the pendulum of history” dramatically. In other words, they went from one end of the spectrum--a liberal revolution that made them more attached to their country--to the other--a return to monarchical rule that forced them to leave it-- in a more heightened state than most other major and minor figures. Thus, their magnetism.

In rereading my journal entries, I notice motifs, repeated words, structures that I hadn’t intended to arise. That’s one of the magics of editing and reframing--you see farther into yourself.

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part three / outside the cave

Journal

I walked opposed to the stream on the side of the road. That’s what happens when you ascend. I was on the side of a road, a different one, as cars passed, no sidewalk. I remembered Mark Baumer. His light. His adult/child effervescence. History, histories are deaths. At the moment others face the firing squad, we listen, we record.

The wind sounds technological up here. Tree coverage is what afforded the walk up its sanctuary, its calm. My legs are tired. Whalley and Goffe could be hiding in the cave. It’s not really a cave, though—names are approximations that help us make sense of the world. It’s not a face, but it still grants invisibility. In fact it’s a miraculous pile of boulders—the fact that its still here after 350 years is stunning. When I go in the cave the magic might be mired. Or Goffe & Whalley might just step outside, courting me in their absence.

Afterimage

The walk from Beaver Pond Park to West Rock was greener, what I had hoped I’d come across. For a stretch of almost a mile, though, the sidewalk disappeared, and I had to walk in the road, dodging cars and drivers’ vexed glances. 

This is what made me think of Mark Baumer. Mark was a poet and close friend of David Gorin, my English teacher last semester. David introduced us to Mark’s YouTube videos during our Profile unit. Mark was walking barefoot across the United States to raise money for climate change. His videos are quirky, self-aware, and occasionally inspirational. I watched them every day. After putting out his 100th video and making it through his100th day, Mark was walking on the side of the road, late at night, when he was hit by a car and killed. This is the piece the New Yorker published in response: [http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-tragic-death-of-mark-baumer-a-prolific-poet-and-environmental-activist-for-the-social-media-age]

Mark’s death moved me more than I immediately realized. His spirit shone through every video--I felt like I knew him, and knew him well. His travel was inspirational, paradoxically, because it made no sense--there were lots of better ways to raise money for climate change, and he knew that. Mark’s motivation was more complicated than that--it seemed like even he wasn’t 100% sure what he was doing--something aesthetic, something artistic, something introspective, something provacative? Day by day, he teased out the meaning, as if he was traveling to figure out why he was traveling. Though this might read as self-indulgent, Mark managed to skirt that label, at least in my book. His care for the environment and its habitants felt present in every second. 

Mark kept up a meticulous travel blog [http://thebaumer.com/]. He’s become sort of a martyr in my mind, like Whalley and Goffe--but I still don’t know what for.

Once I finally reached the park, climbed in elevation, and scrambled up to the cave-by-name-only, I felt transported. I felt healthy and lucky to be alive.

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part two / halfway there, at beaver pond park

Journal

Tanned leaves and half-broken white plastic plates wither in the wind. Birds sound out, syringes aloft. I got lost. I followed Goffe to its end and found a cemetery.

Once I passed Stop & Shop, I walked like Goffe and Whalley. Head down, unsure who was out to get me. Sniffles are here to stay. Warm back. Blinking eyes. This park’s sign describes it as an oasis. Are we OK with the implications of that?

This trip may be predicated on the idea of an oasis—temporal, not spatial. Think Ouija Board minus the paranoia.

Afterimage

During a biweekly Skype session with my Mom, I told her about this project. “Exciting,” she said. “Take lots of pictures!”

The next call, I noticed a slight change in her timbre. “Are you still planning to go to West Rock?” she asked. “By yourself?” I said yes. She explained that she had looked it up, and heard the area around it was “sketchy.” She didn’t want me to go unless I brought a friend. “What if something happens?” After aggressive reassurance, she eventually understood I was committed, but told me to tell at least 3 people where I was and when I’d be back.

An overprotective mother’s concern for her only child is understandable. But it flustered me. I felt an inner conflict. Don’t reduce this city to stereotype, don’t succumb to the comfort of suburbia, don’t worry--you know New Haven. But I also heard another voice. You don’t really know New Haven. You go where you’re supposed to go. You don’t know what’s out there.

This is an embarrassing dialogue--white bourgeouis angst wanting to get rid of itself. I hoped actually going on this day trip, actually walking past Stop & Shop, would contextualize my place in New Haven and afford greater perspective.

All this anticipation is contained in those I scribbled: “I walked like Goffe and Whalley. Head down, unsure who was out to get me.” It’s quite a flawed analogy, but it nonetheless resonated with me in the moment. They found themselves in a foreign part of town that fateful morning, and walked quickly--a Royalist could be right around the corner.

I, too, walked quickly. I felt a dramatic demographic shift--it’s surprising to say, but I don’t know if I’ve ever really walked around in a majority black area of town for more than a couple of minutes before. The houses were nice, kids were putting up a trampoline in a yard. I still heard my mother’s voice--sketchy. It seemed safe to me, but I worried I didn’t know what to look for. I told myself I was well-adjusted, but biology rarely lies--my adrenaline and heart rate definitely raised.

Missing my turn didn’t help. I recalibrated in the graveyard I stumbled upon. Eventually I made it to Beaver Pond Park, and sat down at a bench to write that journal entry.

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part one / where davenport lived

Journal

Both the traffic and the breeze are heavy this morning. I’m sitting outside, on stairs surrounded by a nook of brick, in front of the WTNH News 8 building. I still feel exposed. Writing in public spaces means occupying them longer than is normal. I feel in imposed sense of delusion coming on. People in cars look up. I look down. I try to picture Davenport’s estate. Greener. Quieter. But something in the air. Something’s always in the air. The questions is, is it the same something?

As a foreigner to New England, I feel poised to impose an untruth. Or hopefully a truth-truth.

Afterimage

I felt that foreignness in more ways than one. Getting from my dorm on Old Campus to what used to be John Davenport’s house sans technology proved a challenge. I headed off in what I thought was the correct direction, but after 15 minutes without seeing any of the landmarks I expected, I realized I had, over my semester-and-a-half at Yale, ingrained a misaligned sense of direction. The roads I thought traveled southward, travel westward. I had rotated New Haven 90 degrees, and the cognitive dissonance that comes from an internalived, incorrect bearing clashed with the rudimentary map I held, folded into fours. 

It’s embarrassing to think that I had a totally skewed conception of a city I’ve spent so much time in. College trains us to seek and stick to patterns of locomotion, and it’s easy to accept those and never attempt to break their inertial spell. I’m glad this project wouldn’t let me do that.

After circuiting the wrong edge of the city for half an hour, I finally reached my beginning. Forced to reconstruct my compass rose, I felt the burden and blessings of mapmaking. New Haven was now New again.

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archive three

Why did Whalley and Goffe flee to New Haven? John Davenport explains this well. Both the founder and pastor of the colony, he exerted a powerful Puritan influence that was well-known across the pond. To the regicides, he represented a sympathetic figure, someone who supported the Cromwell’s Commonwealth army and was frustrated by Charles II’s return to power. As such, they headed straight to him upon arriving in New Haven in early 1661, and he happily housed them for the better part of half a year

I found his letters in the Sterling stacks. A year after the regicides escaped from Davenport’s home to West Rock, he sent William Goffe a letter. In it, Davenport bemoans the “ranck Papist” Robert Carr’s appointment to Ecclesiastical Governorship in New England and worries about “what Imposicions will be laid upon New England” (199). The rest of the letter reads like a news report of happenings both locally and in England--Davenport wanted to inform Goffe of the news Davenport was privy to as mayor. 

It’s easy to forget, amongst the political intricacies and diplomatic tete-a-tetes, that Whalley and Goffe’s story is ultimately one of exile. Whalley and Goffe were displaced from their homes. They sacrificed all the friends and family they had for the cause they believed in. Davenport’s letter points to the way that 17th century rebels like he, Whalley, and Goffe suppressed their empathic and tender faculties for the cause, yet talked about what they lost in the only ways they knew how. 

It’s also worth noting that Davenport’s decision to harbor fugitives was a big part of England’s decision to merge the Connecticut and New Haven colonies, then separate entities (the former much more closely tied to the Crown).

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the plan

where am I starting?

I want to recreate, as best I can, the route Whalley and Goffe took. The destination is clear, but their starting place was mysterious to me.

I knew they were taken in by the Reverend John Davenport, mayor and founder of New Haven. With a little digging, I found the Brockett Map of 1641, which lays out New Haven’s 3 x 3 grid of squares with names on each property. John Davenport’s name is in the middle square of the bottom row, on the right. After translating the Brockett Map’s orientation, I figured out that Whalley and Goffe woke up early on May 13 in beds on a property that is now occupied by the WTNH New Haven broadcasting station.

Here’s my general plan: I’ll get up early and walk to the broadcasting station. That’s where my travel will officially begin. As best I can, I’ll retrace Whalley and Goffe’s probable path to the cave, as depicted below. I won’t take out my phone or other technology once--I will navigate like they did, with a rudimentary map. I’ll stop along the way to journal. I’ll spend as much time in the cave as I can, and get home before dark.

where am I going?

what am I bringing? 

*1 map of West Rock

*1 folder

*1 pen

*1 pencil

*1 camera

*1 notebook

*not pictured: 3 muffins

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archive 2

I’m not the first to draw creative inspiration from Whalley and Goffe’s exile and escapades. As the 20th Century rose over the horizon, Margaret Sidney wrote “The Judges Cave: A Romance of the Regicides”.

Its gloriously contrived 400-some pages fictionalize New Haven in 1661. It hasn’t aged particularly well, literally and figuratively (see the photo below for proof), but I still found myself excited by it.

I couldn’t get through the entire book (like I said, 400 pages of a 17th century soap opera wears thin), but the first chapter speaks to its overall character. 

Marcia Sabine, a New Haven local, ventures into the woods a lá Little Red Riding Hood “to reach her home at Uncle Sperry’s, that she might the quicker give the finishing touches to the preparations for the evening’s merrymaking” (11). Suddenly, a bear appears on the otherwise-placid New England path. Marcia believes herself doomed, but at the last possible moment, a stranger suddenly appears beats back the bear with nothing but “a goodly staff” (14). The crisis averted, Marcia express her debt to her savior. Then, with a particularly awkward non-sequitur, she declares to not be afraid of anything, “at least nothing but the wicked Regicides. Were I to meet one of them, I believe I should die of fright” (16). The dramatic irony hinted at here makes itself known after Marcia goes on her way, and the stranger is revealed to be none other than William Goffe. 

The plot isn’t the only intriguing thing about the book. Margaret Sidney is actually a pseudonym for Harriett Mulford Stone Lothrop, a popular children’s book author born and bred in New Haven. It’s no surprise, then, what a large role mistaken identity plays in the text. Real historical figures like Whalley and Goffe and Reverend Davenport and jumbled together with citizens made up out of thin air, none of whom seem to see the towns’ inhabitants as they really are.

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brainrain 1

In preparing for a creative activity, I often find it useful to perform a 5(ish)-minute, stream-of-consciousness-type writing exercise where I just start writing and keep writing and don’t stop writing until I hear my timer go off. It’s similar to how we begin our class most days, but I don’t even worry about syntax or grammar--I just try to put words out. Usually I don’t publicize this part of my process--it’s not pretty, and often nothing comes out of it in a way that is immediately or literally decipherable. Sometimes I do it quietly. This time I tried it with a song. 

[my unedited brainrain]

Gripped by the silence of wounds, wounded knee, native burial grounded by the silence of the empty finite space she wandered waiting to find the two men standing under the furrows of their own four brows. I couldn’t feel myself so I just paid attention. I listened to the calls of the lilies and the ocean far but closer than it was before. Closer than it was before and that felt like it mattered. Lilt and spirals, mired in trying to hide what you have. What do we have? What didn’t they have? A home. Of course. It’s obvious. I see it clearly. They pulled us through and under and green deaths faced us. Or them. I don’t know now.

Bleeding. When do they know they are gone? They knew when they left on the morning of the bugle. They imagined themselves, so I don’t have to feel bad for imagining them, too. Neither Whalley nor I saw him as he is. No guilt. Wounds shame us into, or away from, a separate pain. When I stub my toe I keep my distance from the sharpness. I inch closer to a standard of pain. What did they feel compared to how I feel? Is this the sort of infinite impossible that can be counted, or is it the bigger one? How do I commune? 

I circle back to communion. It is religious, or spiritual. Which is of course what I want from us. What they wanted. Their strength summoned spirits, the 5th port, the 5th connection, the 5th linkage. I want to concatenate, ultimately, pentagonally.

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TRAVEL TO vs. TRAVEL FROM

My favorite class in high school was junior English. Among the many evocative questions Mr. Valassidis, a colossal Greek man who was a bouncer before professing his love of Emerson for a living, asked us, one has kept returning to me throughout my time in this course. It seems particularly salient in light of my venture to West Rock.

At the end of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck decides to leave the familiar banks of the Mississippi River and head West. 

“But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”

He’s spent the entire novel exploring his mobility, but this culminating choice is still surprising. On my class’s last day discussing the book, Mr. V posed this question: “Is Huck running away from something, or is running towards something?” 

Sometimes a character quite clearly leans on one side of this dichotomy. Nella Larsen’s Helga Crane? She’s traveling from, trying to escape the institutionalized quicksand dragging her down. Katherine Dunham? She’s traveling to, looking to discover and engage with Haiti’s known and unknown cultural canon.

Mr. V’s questions has a central conceit--it’s impossible to travel from while not also travelling to, and vice-versa. But characters in literature (and in real life) often seem to convince themselves that they’re only doing one of the two. Not only that, they often are confused about their motives, and we’re forced to read between the lines to grasp at what’s truly affording them momentum.

In general, it’s easy to convince ourself that our reasons for doing something are different than they really are. I’m wary of this. I sense a hidden magic at Judges’ Cave that I feel pulling me towards it. But it was also a convenient location for the project. What will I leave behind, however impermanently, when I take my first and final steps?

~That photo is supposed to be a time-lapse GIF taken from my dorm window. but it seems to have stopped working. Here’s a link that should be viewable: http://i.imgur.com/U010yAS.gifv

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archive 1

As I’ve mentioned, my initial and central inspiration for this adventure is the drama that unfolded around regicides in New Haven. For centuries, the events of 1661 were common lore in Connecticut and the greater Eastern Seaboard. Nowadays, many people living near West Rock are completely ignorant of the . To introduce the movers and shakers of this tale, I’m first turning to Chris Pagliuco’s recently-published recount, the most complete yet concise summary of William Goffe and Edward Whalley’s escape to Judges’ Cave on the market.

Edward grew up with Oliver Cromwell in the first quarter of the 17th century (13). He lived a craftsman’s life, married a woman named Judith Duffel, and fathered a son and a daughter. William, also from the south of England, took Edward’s daughter’s hand in marriage, and thus became his son-in-law (though William was actually two years older than Edward). Both men became known for their charisma and Puritan fervor (14).

In 1628, the year Edward turned 21, Charles I banished the English Parliament after they attempted to check his rule and refused to reassemble the institution for 11 years, a stretch of time infamously known as the “Personal Rule” (30). Poor timing meant that this breach of tradition coincided with a costly war against Scotland and religious policies that alienated Puritans. Incensed, Edward, Oliver, Cromwell, and throes of likeminded Roundheads banded together to challenge Charles’s authority. Oliver raised an impressive army, and in what became known as the English Civil War, he successfully ended Charles’s rule. In 1649, Charles was put on trial (31-33).

Edward was a prominent captain in Oliver’s army who led several essential charges throughout the war (23). William was an intellectual radical who aided Cromwell diplomatically and personally (29). Together, they attended every day of the trial, unlike most members of Oliver’s assemblage, and voted “off with his head” in January of 1649 (38). This marked the first time in recorded history a monarch was lawfully tried to death while still in power.

But the Cromwell’s Protectorate was short-lived. In 1660, Charles II was restored to the throne. One of his first acts was to call for jailing and execution of all the regicides, among them Edward and William. Many regicides were found and hung (62). Edward and William secreted themselves away on a ship bound for Massachusetts, and eventually made it to New Haven in March of 1661 (65). It took a few months for Charles II’s official proclamation for their apprehension to travel across the Atlantic, but once it reached the colonies, they knew they were in trouble (68). On an otherwise-nondescript Monday morning in early May, William and Edward trekked from the center of town to West Rock, where they hid in a makeshift cave (74. They stayed there for more than a month, receiving food from sympathetic countryfolk and avoiding royalist police. In June, they headed south, leaving behind a legacy grounded within what became as Judges’ Cave (75). 

It’s their trip from New Haven to Judges’ Cave that I hope to recreate.

The book isn’t as dry as I’ve made it out to be. Some of the juicier details will drip through the entries in the following days, I’m sure. But I felt it important to center you clearly in the frame of this transtemporal tale. More to come soon.

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peeling research's fruits

Meeting with my personal librarian proved very fruitful. With her help, I found three vastly different sources in Sterling Memorial Library’s stacks--not to mention some rare books in the Beinecke that I hope to reserve for next week. I’ve spent time with all of the books, and hope they inform my fast-approaching travel. 

It’s important that I dedicate time to researching the regicides and their journeys for several reasons. My entire travel experience is inspired and predicated by the past--their past. Although I began the project with some familiarity of the English Civil War and having walked down Whalley Avenue once or twice, I want to better understand the two men who made the cave their home. More than that, I hope to embed myself in the history of a place and become fluent in the sentiments of its inhabitants*. Reading is central to that mission. By the time I actually walk to West Rock, I want to have a sense of how my environs have evolved over the past 400-some years; what separates me from Whalley and Goffe?

But before I get that deep, I have some people, places, and ideas to introduce. To do that, I’ll be referring to the resources in posts to follow. Stay tuned. 

*I’m still not sure how narrow or wide, per Professor Hopper’s workshop, that place is. Just the Cave? Just West Rock? Just New Haven? I’ll keep you posted.