Angel of Hadley

The Angel of Hadley is the central character in an eponymous legend intersecting the The Regicide of Charles I of England, King Philip's War and the Town of Hadley, Massachusetts.

The legend

The basics of the story are these:In 1676, at the height of King Philip's War, the leader of the Indian forces faked the English forces into deploying north, and then attacked the lightly defended town of Hadley, Massachusetts. The defenders, lacking professional fighting expertise, despaired for their lives.

Suddenly, a white-bearded man of powerful bearing and commanding voice appeared, wielding an old cavalry sabre. He marshaled the militia and led them to victory, and then disappeared. This character soon became known as the Angel of Hadley.cite web
url=http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=5hvC1x_n0M4C&dq=History+of+Hadley+Including+the+Early+History+of+Hatfield,+South+Hadley,+Amherst+and+Granby,+Massachusetts.&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=msUTpH4SoI&sig=2UrQkcKR_p3nRCn0GNJOiws22wQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result|title=History of Hadley Including the Early History of Hatfield, South Hadley, Amherst and Granby, Massachusetts
author=Judd, Sylvester|pp=137-39
date=1905|accessdate=June 14|accessyear=2008
publisher=H.R. Huntting]

English Royal authorities suspected the man to be the Puritan General William Goffe, still wanted for his role in the regicide of Charles I. If captured, Goffe would face a highly unpleasant execution, as might anyone who had aided in his concealment.

William Goffe was a highly capable Puritan military commander who fled to New England upon the Restoration. Many of his associates met painful execution and it is likely that his pursuers intended the same for him. New England was heavily Puritan at the time, and therefore a good hiding place for the regicides.

Some letters of Goffe dated from that time survive, giving vague clues as to his location in the appropriate general area. It is widely believed that, for a time, he was hidden in the house of Hadley’s minister, John Russell.

According to the legend, the Puritan citizens of Hadley gave the Royalist investigators several versions of the battle:

# The battle never took place
# If the battle took place, there was no white-bearded leader
# If there was a white-bearded leader, he wasn’t William Goffe
# If the leader was William Goffe, he wasn’t around anymore.

Controversy

Among the disputed facts in this

* What was the date of the event. The town of Hadley’s website [ [http://www.hadleyma.org/history.shtml town of Hadley’s website] ] gives the date as June 12 (while describing the event as a legend); others say September 1;
* Whether King Philip’s forces attacked Hadley on the day in question;
* Whether General Goffe ever led Hadley’s forces.

Assessing the story

As a matter of history, it may not be possible to demonstrate whether the story of the Angel of Hadley is either true or false. Material evidence appears to be, at best, scanty. The legend has no supernatural elements or outright impossibilities (if the “appearance” were simply emerging from a hiding place). Each character has a plausible motivation; the “Angel” to use his military expertise to save the town (and his own life); the townspeople to protect their savior from subsequent investigations.

As a legend, the Angel of Hadley has several powerful elements: a small town in peril, a mysterious stranger hiding from an oppressive King, a victory, a disappearance, a Rashomon-like disagreement in accounts given to outsiders.

As a legend, it may have furnished ideas used by Sir Walter Scott in "Peveril of the Peak" and by James Fenimore Cooper in "The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish". [ [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/8888 The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish at Gutenberg.org] ] It is also a likely source for "The Grey Champion", a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story that features an elderly Puritan man who brandishes a sword in defense of his people.

External links

* [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/sgml/moa-idx?notisid=AFJ3026-0015-31 The Regicides in New England] , by Frederick Hull Cogswell
* [http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/marshall/country/country-III-31.html The Hunt for the Regicides] , Chapter 31 of “This Country Of Ours", by Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
* [http://www.geocities.com/bstateob/hadley.html The Angel of Hadley] , by Libby Klekowski and Tom Devine
* [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9831%28193211%294%3A3%3C257%3ATAOHIF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage|The Angel of Hadley in Fiction] , G. Harrison Orians, "American Literature", Vol. 4, No. 3 (Nov., 1932), pp. 257-269

References