ABSTRACT
If, as the essays in this volume have argued, the English Revolution had a pronounced and hitherto underappreciated European dimension, its aftermath had equally far-reaching and neglected ramifications in North America. Any genuine reassessment of the Revolution’s chronology and geography, any full reconfiguration of the space of political exile in this period, should look to acknowledge them. In this respect, the experiences and writings of William Goffe are of uncommon interest. Goffe, and his father-in-law, Edward Whalley, were Major-Generals during Cromwell’s experiment with military rule in the mid-1650s. They were also, more seminally, members of a select group of onetime parliamentarians which was to be conspicuously excluded from the king’s mercy in the Bill of Indemnity and Oblivion signed on 29 August 1660: the regicides, signatories to the death warrant of Charles I in January 1649.1 This chapter turns the microscope of history and literary analysis on Goffe’s consequent exile in New England, for which he sailed (with Whalley) from Gravesend on 12 May 1660.
