The English Civil War and the roundup of the regicides of King Charles I after the Cromwellian “roundhead” parliamentarians are routed and the royalty was reestablished in the person of the nefarious whoring Charles ll forms the backdrop to this historical novel. Much of the action takes place in New England where the Puritan regicides Colonels Ned Whaley and Will Goffe have fled and are sought for return to England to be hanged, drawn and quartered, a process that is described in gruesome detail.
Every development seems to be interpreted as an act of God, with constant reference to biblical verses, often quoted out of context. John Davenport, a strict Puritan preacher and founder of New Haven, Connecticut, where the colonels sought refuge for a time, designed it as the home for Christ’s second coming in 1666, when by his unshakeable conviction, He would establish his Heaven on earth in America, as he interpreted various Old Testament and Book of Revelations texts. What must be Sleeping Giant Mountain, north of New Haven, within a couple of miles of where I lived for three years, is the site of one of the many cat-and-mouse narrow escapes for the regicides as they elude their pursuers, although it seems clear that many of these close encounters are far from factual. But the distances cited from their hideout to downtown New Haven, the harbour, and Long Island Sound are shorter than those lodged in my memory fifty years ago. However, the controversial attempt to establish New Haven as a chartered territory separated from Connecticut was real. If the Puritan founders had prevailed against the Crown, we would now probably have a separate New England state of New Haven, or perhaps a separate country, had the Revolutionary Army not defeated them 110 years later.
But the Dutch control over New Amsterdam (New York) was a distraction that had to be dealt with as did the latter battles with the Dutch in Britain.
The Black Plague and the Great Fire of London, following in quick succession are interpreted by the Bible-quoting Puritans as sings of the last times, as predicted in the Book of Revelations, and every event, for better or for worse, is seen through the cognitive dissonance of a benevolent Good with evil and hardship attributed to His working in mysterious ways, a non-explanation still prevalent in some circles.
An interesting and entertaining novel. Although the chronology of the major political events is doubtlessly accurate and has been carefully researched, this one seems to me to be far more fiction than history, and the author would probably agree. But reading it in 2022, with changes in Buckingham Palace raises new questions about the durability of the British monarchy. Not an historian, I nevertheless quite enjoyed reading it.
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Thanks, Mike I.
The Passionate Reader 