He had commanded at the capture of Worcester, xheregi-
where it is interesting to observe that the royalist "i^^ i^^s^s
commander who surrendered to him was Colonel Henry
Washington, own cousin to the great-grandfather of George
Washington. The other regicide, William Goffe, as a major-
general in Cromwell's army, had won such distinction that
there were some who pointed to him as the proper person to
succeed the Lord Protector on the death of the latter. He




REGICIDES HIDING UNDER BRIDGE



had married Whalley's daughter. Soon after the arrival of
these gentlemen, a royal order for their arrest was sent to
Boston. If they had been arrested and gent back to Eng-
land, their severed heads would soon have been placed over
Temple Bar. The king's detectives hotly pursued them
through the woodland paths of New England, and they
would soon have been taken but for the aid they got from
the people. Many are the stories of their hairbreadth es-
capes. Sometimes they took refuge in a cave on a mountain




222 THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND

near New Haven, sometimes they hid in friendly cellars;
and once, being hard put to it, they skulked under a wooden
bfidge, while their pursuers on horseback galloped by over-
head. After lurking about New Haven and Milford for two
or three years, on hearing of the expected arrival of Colonel
Nichols and his commission, they sought a more secluded
hiding-place near Hadley, a village lately settled far up the
Connecticut river, within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.
