William Goffe, an English regicide, born about 1605, died in Hadley, Mass., in 1679. He was one of the most fervent of the Puritans, was a devoted adherent of Cromwell, one of the best officers of the parliamentary army, and one of the judges who tried Charles I. After the death of the protector and the restoration of the Stuarts he escaped to America, and was in 1660, with his father-in-law Edward Whalley, received with courtesy by Gov. En-dicott at Boston. Warrants soon after arrived for their arrest, a price was set on their heads, and Indians as well as English were sent in pursuit of them. They removed from house to house, living in mills, in the clefts of rocks on the seashore, and in caves in the forests. They hid themselves for months in a cavern near New Haven, from which they issued only by night. This retreat was discovered, and they tied successively to Milford, Derby, and Branford. At length they found an asylum in the house of a clergyman at Hadley, where Goffe passed the remaining 15 years of his life.

In 1675 the town of Hadley was surprised during a religious service by the Pokanoket Indians under their celebrated chieftain Philip. The inhabitants were about to fall beneath the tomahawk when an old man with a long white beard appeared in the church, rallied the disheartened colonists, disposed them for a charge upon the Indians which he himself led, and put the savages to flight. This was Goffe, who in the moment of victory disappeared again for ever, leaving the colonists in the persuasion that a heavenly messenger had fought for them.