In the mean time, the Governor of Massachusetts received a royal mandate requiring him to apprehend them; and a more full circumstantial account of the condemnation and the execution of the ten regicides, and of the disposition of the Court toward them, and the republicans and Puritans in general, arrived in New England. This gave a more general and thorough alarm to the whole country. A feigned search had been made in the Massachusetts, in consequence of the former warrant, for the Colonels Whalley and Goffe; but now the Governor and magistrates began to view the affair in a more serious point of light, and appear to have been in earnest to secure them. They perceived that their own personal safety and the liberties and peace of the country were concerned in the manner of their conduct toward these unhappy men. They therefore immediately gave a commission to Thomas Kellond and Thomas Kirk, two zealous young royalists, to go through the colonies as far as Manhadoes, and make a careful and universal search for them. They pursued the judges to Hartford, and, repairing to Governor Winthrop’s, were nobly entertained. He assured them that the colonels had made no stay in Connecticut, but went directly to New Haven. He gave them a warrant, and instructions similar to those which they had received from the Governor of Massachusetts, and transacted everything relative to the affair with dispatch. The next day they arrived at Guilford, and opened their business to Deputy-Governor Leet. They acquainted him that, according to the intelligence which they had received, the regicides were at New Haven. They desired immediately to be furnished with powers, horses, and assistance, to arrest them. But here they were very unwelcome messengers. Governor Leet and the principal gentlemen in Guilford and New Haven had no ill opinion of the judges. If they had done wrong in the part they had acted, they viewed it as an error in judgment, and as the fault of great and good men, under peculiar and extraordinary circumstances. They were touched with compassion and sympathy, and had real scruples of conscience with respect to delivering up such men to death. They viewed them as the “excellent of the earth,” and were afraid to betray them, lest they should be instrumental in shedding innocent blood. They saw no advantage in putting them to death. They were not zealous, therefore, to assist in apprehending them. Governor Leet said he had not seen them in nine weeks, and that he did not believe they were at New Haven. He read some of the papers relative to the affair with an audible voice.