I came across a 1961 edition of
The Life Treasury of American Folklore. I sampled a couple of stories and what a pleasant reminder of robust America History storytelling.
In regard to this particular tale, I read a history of the American Puritans in the English Civil War within the last few years and so was familiar with history of General Goffe, but not this particular story.
The Angel of Hadley
The story of the Angel of Hadley is largely true. The two Cromwellian generals involved did seek refuge in the little town of Hadley, Massachusetts, from the agents of Charles II, and the Indians did attack Hadley during King Philip War. The version which follows was compiled from Judd's History of Hadley.
When in 1645 Oliver Cromwell's Roundheads had crushed the forces loyal to the English monarchy, the king, Charles I, was tried and condemned to death by three judges Cromwell followers of high rank. Two of them were Generals Edward Whalley and William Goffe. Fifteen years later, Charles II was restored to the throne and the men who had condemned the new king's father were forced to flee the country. Generals Whalley and Goffe sought asylum in the American colonies where they settled for a time in Cambridge under the names of Richardson and Shepardson and spent their time attending church and lectures, and occasionally dining with the president of Harvard College. Aside from their pseudonyms, they made little attempt to disguise their identities in Puritan and antimonarchial Cambridge.
But the news from home grew increasingly ominous for the two men. In February of 1661 colonial authorities received orders for the arrest of the generals. Friends decided that they must be sent well away from the Massachusetts Bay area. An Indian guide took them west to Springfield, and there other sympathizers helped them reach Hartford and then New Haven. But King Charles was determined to have the generals and dispatched two royalists to hunt them down.
The royalist investigators demanded warrants to search New Haven for the men in hiding, but permission was delayed until Whalley and Goffe had had time to flee. They managed to hide in the area of Guilford for some time, but then, in the autumn of 1664, a group of commissioners was sent from London with express orders to seize the two fugitives. Again they were spirited away by friends and after a night journey reached the tiny village of Hadley just north of Holyoke where they were taken in by a sympathetic clergyman Reverend John Russell. There the two men dropped from sight.
Where the two men hid, how or where they died, where they are buried all is long forgotten. But one of the generals, according to leg-end, made a dramatic reappearance.
September, 1675, a decade after Goffe and Whalley took refuge in Hadley, King Philip's War was raging. As was the custom in times of peril, the citizens of the town had gathered in the church to "seek the face of God by fasting and prayer." At the very time they were praying for help against the Indians, the savages attacked the village. Many of the men had brought weapons to church, but when they rushed out to fight the enemy, they were met with a barrage of arrows. The colonists were thrown into confusion, and the Indians charged into the settlement. All seemed lost. Then there appeared an old gray-bearded man, dressed in clothes of military cut, brandishing a broadsword and shouting battlewise orders like one used to command.
The colonists obeyed him and fought off the Indians. The village was saved. But when the panting and relieved settlers looked about to thank the man who had led them to victory, he was not to be found. He had seemingly vanished in a second from the heart of the tiny village. This led the religious townspeople to conclude that providence had sent them an angel in answer to their prayers to aid them in their hour of desperate need. For many years that briefly seen old man was known as "The Angel of Hadley."
But others, knowing the story of the judges, said the graybeard in the strange clothes was no angel but General Goffe, who forsook his 10 years' concealment to turn his military skill to the service of the village that had given him refuge, and who, once the fighting was over and victory assured, slipped quickly back into his hideaway, there to stay for the rest of his life.
