In November, came out the Act of Indemnity, by which it appeared that Goffe and Whalley were not included in the amnesty which covered a multitude of sins. It was nevertheless far in February before the governor had entered upon even a formal inquiry of his council, as to what he should do with the fugitives; a formality which, empty as it was, must have occasioned their abrupt departure from Massachusetts. At Newhaven, a concentrated Puritanism seems to have offered them a much safer asylum;[41] and as a brother-in-law of Whalley's had lately held a kind of pastoral dignity in that place, it is not improbable that they received pledges of protection, should they choose it for their city of refuge. One now goes from Boston to Newhaven, by railroad and steamer, in less than a day; but in those times it was very good travelling which brought them to their Alsatia in less than a fortnight. There they were received as saints and confessors; and Davenport, the strait-laced pastor of the colony, seems to have taken them under his especial patronage. He seems to have been a kind of provincial Hugh Peters, though he was not without his virtues: and there was far more fear of him before the eyes of the local authorities, than there was of King Charles and his Council. His Majesty was in fact completely browbeaten and discomfited, when his warrant was afterwards brought into collision with the will of this doughty little Pope: and to him the regicides owed it, that they finally died in America. The government at home seems really to have been in earnest in the matter, and a royal command was not long in reaching Endicott, requiring him to do all his power for the arrest of the runaways. He seems to have been scared into something like obedience, and two zealous young royalists offering their services as pursuers, he was obliged to despatch them to Newhaven. So vigorously did these young men prosecute their errand, that but for the bustling fanaticism of Davenport, they would certainly have redeemed the honour of the colonies, and given their lordships at Westminster Hall the trouble of two more state trials. For its own sake, no one, indeed, can be sorry that such was not the result. But when one thinks how many curious details of history would have transpired on the trials of such prominent rebels, it seems a pity that they could not have been made serviceable in this way, and then set, with Prynne, to do penance among the old parchments in the Tower.