Edward Whalley (abt. 1606 - abt. 1674)

Born about 1606 in Kirketon Hall, Screveton, Nottinghamshire, England

Ancestors

Descendants

Died about 1674 at about age 68 in Hadley, Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay

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Biography

The English regicide, who was one of the judges who signed the death warrant of King Charles I.

Early life

The exact dates of his birth and death are unknown. He was the second son of Richard Whalley, Esq. and his 2nd wife, Frances (Cromwell) Whalley, the aunt of England's 16th Century Republican "Protector," Oliver Cromwell. His father was a gentry-level landowner in Northamptonshire, where he had been Sheriff in 1595 under Queen Elizabeth I. His great-grandfather was Richard Whalley (1499–1583), a prominent adherent of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, and a Member of Parliament. Edward is said to have started out as a woollen-draper. During the 1620s and 1630s, he was a farmer in Chadwell St Mary, Essex but this farming venture turned out not to be a success. In 1639, Whalley was forced to flee to Scotland to escape from his creditors leaving his wife behind him.^[1]

Early career

On the outbreak of the English Civil War, he took up arms for Parliament and James Temple obtained a position for him as a cornet in the cavalry troop commanded by Temple’s cousin John Fiennes (the son of his uncle, Viscount Saye and Sele).^[2] He fought at the Battle of Edgehill and later became major. When his 1st cousin the Parliamentary leader, Oliver Cromwell seized power, he promoted his cousin Edward to the rank of Major General in Cromwell's pro-Parliament army. and gave him a sizable command. He distinguished himself in the field and his conduct at Battle of Gainsborough in 1643 was especially praised by Cromwell. He fought at the Battle of Marston Moor, commanded one of Cromwell's two regiments of cavalry at the Battle of Naseby and at the capture of Bristol, was then sent into Oxfordshire, took Banbury, England, and was besieging Worcester, England when he was superseded, according to Richard Baxter, the chaplain of his regiment, because of his religious orthodoxy.

Regimental officer

He supported his regiment in their grievances against Parliament in 1647. When the king was seized by the army, he was entrusted to the keeping of Whalley and his regiment at Hampton Court Palace. Whalley refused to remove Charles's chaplains, and treated his captive with courtesy, so much so that Charles later wrote him a letter of thanks. In the Second English Civil War, Whalley again distinguished himself as a soldier.

Regicide of Charles I

When King Charles I was arrested in 1647, it was Edward who commanded the troops who held him captive at Hampton Court palace. Edward was said to be courteous and firm. When the King escaped from Hampton Court, he left a letter thanking Edward for his civility. The King was recaptured a few months later and [text missing].

He was chosen to be a Commissioner (judge) at the trial of King Charles I in January 1649. It was said that he was present at all the trial's sessions except one. He and the rest of the nineteen judges signed the royal death warrant, his being the 4th signature on that paper to sign the king's death-warrant, immediately after Cromwell. The King was executed in London on 30 January 1649. These were the 19 "regicides" condemned by the royalist Restoration in 1660.^[3]

In April 1649, soldiers in his regiment took part in the Bishopsgate mutiny. They refused to go on the Irish expedition until the Levellers' political demands were met and they received back pay. They were ordered out of London and when they refused to go, fifteen soldiers were arrested and court-martialled, of whom six were sentenced to death. Of this six, five were subsequently pardoned while Robert Lockyer, a former Levellers agitator, was shot.^[4]

When the English Civil War broke out between Parliamentary supporters and those of Catholic-leaning King Charles I, Edward Whalley quickly joined the Parliamentary forces, returning to England from his Scottish exile. Whalley took part in Cromwell's English Civil War Scottish expedition, was wounded at the Battle of Dunbar (1650), and in the autumn of 1650 was active in dealing with the situation in the north.

The following year, he took part in Cromwell's pursuit of Charles II of England and took part in the Battle of Worcester. He followed and supported Cromwell in his political career, presented the army petition to parliament (August 1652), approved of the protectorate, and represented Nottinghamshire in the parliaments of 1654 and 1656, taking an active part in the prosecution of the Quaker James Naylor. He was one of the administrative major-generals, responsible for Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Warwick and Leicester. He supported the "Petition and Advice," except as regards the proposed assumption of the royal title by Oliver Cromwell, and became a member of the newly constituted Cromwell's Upper House of Lords in December 1657.

On Oliver Cromwell's death, at which he was present, he in vain gave his support to Richard Cromwell; his regiment refused to obey his orders, and the Long Parliament dismissed him from his command as a representative of the army. In November 1659 he undertook an unsuccessful mission to Scotland to arrange terms with George Monck.

Withdrawal to the colonies

In 1661, after King Charles II retook the throne following Cromwell's death, the 19 regicides were condemned to the block. Edward and his son in law, Colonel William Goffe (aka Goode), fled first to Geneva, Switzerland and escaped to North America, landed at Boston on 27 July 1660, where they were well received by Governor John Endecott and visited by the principal persons of the town They went about quite openly, and chose to live in Cambridge, about 2 miles (3.2 km) from Boston in the colony of Massachusetts Bay. Edward's brother Robert also fled England for America, going to Virginia, where he had earlier established a plantation, changing his name to Theophilus Whaley. Robert (Theophilus) eventually moved to Rhode Island with his Virginia-born wife and children where he lived quietly until 1719. Although not one of the 19 explicitly-condemned regicides, his close relationship with Edward and with Oliver Cromwell, condemned him in the eyes of the resurgent royalists. During this period the English Parliament was debating the content of the Indemnity and Oblivion Act and intelligence that reached the colony that all but seven of the regicides would be pardoned. Knowledge of final contents of the act did not reach the colony until November 1660, and for several months opinion among the leaders of the colony on what to do with Whalley and Goffe was divided.

By February 1661, the Governor seems to have had second thoughts about welcoming the regicides so warmly and on the 22nd summoned a court of assistants to discuss their arrest, but the court did not agree to such action. Whalley and Goffe decided they were no longer safe in Cambridge and left on 26 February. Within a few days (on 8 March), orders arrived, via Barbados, from England for their arrest. The two moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where John Dixwell, also condemned as a regicide, was living under the assumed name of James Davids. Arriving on 7 March 1661, they lodged with John Davenport, the local minister. News of the orders for their arrest arrived in New Haven, so Whalley and Goffe used a subterfuge to throw off any pursuit. They made a show of leaving and going to Milford, where they made sure they were seen, but that night they returned in secret to New Haven. They again lodged secretly with Davenport and a number of other sympathisers until 13 May, when they resorted to hiding in some woodland and a cave on Providence-Hill (spending some nights in a nearby house). Providence-Hill is now known as West Rock, and today the cave is called Judges Cave. In August they moved into a house in Milford belonging to Mr. Tomkins, another sympathiser, and remained there for two years. In 1664 they were forced to return to the cave when the King's commissioners arrived in Boston, but Indians discovered the cave while the two were absent, which forced them to move further away from Boston. On 13 October, travelling only by night, they set off for Hadley, about one hundred miles away in Massachusetts, where the minister, John Russell, had arranged for them to live with him. They remained there undiscovered for fifteen or sixteen years, receiving money from their wives in England and presents from a few supporters who knew where they were in order to pay their host. In the first few years they were in constant fear of discovery, and were much relieved to read in the newspapers that they were thought to have died in Switzerland while living in exile with other regicides. Every attempt by the English government to procure Whalley or Goffe's arrest failed. Whalley was alive but in poor health in 1674, and probably did not live long afterwards.

Marriage and Children

Edward Whalley had 2 wives.

On 7 February 1626 at St Dunstan's Church, Stepney (London), he married Judith Duffell (aka Duffield) of Rochester, Kent, by whom he had

• i. John Whalley (b: ca. 1630, m. Ms. Springate; had son Herbert Whaley, Esq.)
• ii.Frances (b: ca. 1628, who married William Goffe, a fellow regicide judge who fled with Edward to New England).

After Judith's death, his second marriage, in about 1650, was to Mary Middleton, sister of Sir George Middleton, by whom he had two sons,

• i. Edward Whalley Jr. (b: ca. 1656)
• ii. Henry Whalley (b: ca. 1658). Mary (Middleton) Whalley died in 1662 in England.^[5][6]

Notable Relations:

Edward's grandfather, Richard Whallaye, had no less than 25 children, and spent the latter part of his life at the family seat of Screveton, known as Kirketon Hall in Northamptonshire. His last wife, Barbara, erected a monument, one of the finest in the county, to his memory. Richard Whallaye was a steward of Lord Somerset, in the time of King Edward VI, and shared in the vicissitudes of his patron.

Sources

1. ↑ John Matthews, Farming in Chadwell in the 17th Century ( Panorama - the Journal of the Thurrock Local History Society, Number 46, page 57)
2. ↑ Edward Peacock, The Army Lists of the Roundheads and Cavaliers (John Camden Hotten, 1863)
3. ↑ Edward Whalley article on Wikipedia
4. ↑ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Whalley, Edward". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
5. ↑ "Memoirs of the Protectoral-house of Cromwell: Deduced from an ...", Volume 2, pg. 153.
6. ↑ Peter Moore-Noelle Genealogy on RootsWeb - Edward Whalley Jr.

• Marshall, George William. The Visitations of the County of Nottingham in the Years 1569 and 1614 (London, 1871) Page 118

• Cropper, Percy. The Sufferings of the Quakers in Nottinghamshire, 1649-1689 (Edward Hicks, London, 1892)

• Page xv: see footnote: "Edward, espoused the side of the Commonwealth, and became one of its most valiant and trusted leaders. His signature is the fourth on the death warrant of King Charles. At the Restoration he retired to Geneva, and from thence to New England, where he died."

• Miscellaneous Articles on Nottinghamshire History and Archaelogy

• British History online: Proclamation for apprehending the late King's Judges

• http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/how-new-haven-became-part-of-connecticut-it-was-the-regicides/

• A History of three of the Judges of King Charles I, by President Stiles, Hartford, 1794 (Edward Whalley fled to America 1660)

• Simonds, Jesse Rupert. A History of the First Church and Society of Branford, Connecticut, 1644-1919 (Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Co., New Haven, Conn., 1919) Page 43