Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 377, March 1847Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 377, March 1847
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
The troglodytes, then, were but two; but there was a third fugitive
regicide who came to Newhaven, and now lies there in his grave. This was
none other than John Dixwell, whose name, with those of Goffe and
Whalley, may be found on that infamous death-warrant, which some have
not scrupled to call the Major Charta. Dixwell's is set among the
oi polloi, who, in the day of reckoning, were judged hardly worth a
hanging; but Whalley's occupies the bad eminence of being fourth on the
list, and next to the hard-fisted autograph of Oliver himself; while
William Goffe's is signed just before the signature of Pride, whose
miserable penmanship that day, it will be remembered, cost his poor
body an airing on the gibbet, in the year 1660. Scott, by the way, gives
Whalley the _praenomen_ Richard; but there it is on the parchment, too
legible for his soul's good--Edward Whalley. Shall I recur to the rest of
their history in England before I come to my American narrative? Perhaps
in these days of "elucidations," when it is said that every thing about
two hundred years since is, for the first time, undergoing a calm but
earnest review, I may be indulged in recapitulating what, if every body
knows, they know only in a great confusion with other events, which impair
the individual interest.
Of Dixwell, comparatively little is known, save that his first act of
patriotism seems to have consisted in leaving his country. Enough that
he served in the parliamentary army; sat as judge, and stood up as
regicide in that High Court of Treason in Westminster Hall; was one of
Oliver's colonels during the Protectorate; became sheriff of Kent, and
no doubt hanged many a rogue that had a better right to live than
himself; and finally sat in parliament for the same county in 1656.[25]
His experiences after the Restoration are not known, till he emerged in
America almost ten years after the last-mentioned date.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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