Goffe, WILLIAM

Goffe, WILLIAM, regicide, was born about 1605, son of the rector of Stannuer, in Sussex, 'a very severe Puritan.' He became a major-general in the parliamentary army, sat in the House of Commons and in Cromwell's 'other house,' and was one of the judges who signed Charles's death-warrant. In 1660, with his father-in-law, General Edward Whalley, he fled to America; and they lay in hiding round about New Haven from 1661 to 1664, when they went to Hadley, Massachusetts. There they lived for many years in seclusion; and it is there that, according to the well-known tradition, when the townsmen were called from the meeting-house to repel an Indian attack, and were standing irresolute, Goffe put himself at their head and drove off the red-skins, and then disappeared as suddenly as he had come. The genuineness of the story, however, has been questioned. Goffe appears to have died at Hartford in 1679. His papers have been printed by the Massachusetts Historical Society.