ABSTRACT
Scarcity of archival evidence has ensured that the lives of the exiled regicides have received little scholarly attention. What is known about this group suggests that, if their lives were not necessarily nasty, brutish, and short, they nevertheless faced constant threats from royalist agents. Some died of old age and in their beds, but at least one was assassinated, and three more were captured and repatriated, before being tried and executed. Only one of those who fled to Europe, Edmund Ludlow, left any appreciable record of the search for friends in an alien environment. Our understanding is dramatically enhanced, however, by neglected evidence relating to the three men who escaped to New England, William Goffe, Edward Whalley, and John Dixwell, the latter of whose papers are particularly revealing. This chapter scrutinizes Dixwell’s experience, not merely in order to understand how he survived into old age, but also to examine his attitude to his past, his current circumstances, and his plans for the future. To be an exile was to regard one’s reason for absence from England as being political in nature and temporary in duration, and as such it is important to appreciate Dixwell’s relationship with the motherland, his perception of his status and identity while abroad, and his views regarding returning home. What factors kept him in New England, and what, if any, pulled him homeward? Did he set down firm roots in the colonies, or did he consider himself to be merely a temporary resident, biding his time until a propitious moment to return?
