When Whalley and Goffe, upon the King’s return, left England to escape what they apprehended might prove the fate of regicides, the policy of the Court in respect to persons circumstanced as they were had not been promulgated.  Arriving in Boston, in July, and having been courteously welcomed by the Governor, they proceeded the same day to Cambridge, which place for the present they made their home.  For several months they appeared there freely in public.  They attended the public religious meetings, and others held at private houses, at which latter they prayed, and prophesied, or preached.  They visited some of the principal towns in the neighborhood, were often in Boston, and were received, wherever they went, with distinguished attention.

At the end of four months, intelligence came to Massachusetts of the Act of Indemnity, and that Whalley and Goffe were among those excepted from it, and marked for vengeance.  Three months longer they lived at Cambridge unmolested; but in the mean while affairs had been growing critical between Massachusetts and the mother country, and, though some members of the General Court assured them of protection, others thought it more prudent that they should have a hint to provide for their safety in some way which would not imply an affront to the royal government on the part of the Colony.  The Governor called a Court of Assistants, in February, and without secrecy asked their advice respecting his obligation to secure the refugees.  The Court refused to recommend that measure, and four days more passed, at the end of which time—­whether induced by the persuasion of others, or by their own conviction of the impropriety of involving their generous hosts in further embarrassment, or simply because they had been awaiting till then the completion of arrangements for their reception at New Haven—­they set off for that place.

A journey of nine days brought them to the hospitable house of the Reverend Mr. Davenport, where again they moved freely in the society of the ministers and the magistrates.  But they had scarcely been at New Haven three weeks, when tidings came thither of the reception at Boston of a proclamation issued by the King for their arrest.  To release their host from responsibility, they went to Milford, (as if on their way to New Netherland,) and there showed themselves in public; but returned secretly the same night to New Haven, and were concealed in Davenport’s house.  This was towards the last of March.

They had been so situated a month, when their friends had information from Boston that the search for them was to be undertaken in earnest.  Further accounts of their having been seen in that place had reached England, and the King had sent a peremptory order to the Colonial governments for their apprehension.  Endicott, to whom it was transmitted, could do no less than appear to interest himself to execute it; and this he might do with the less reluctance, because,