Contents ▼▲
Front Matter Our Country Long Ago The Barbarous Indians The Mounds Where the Northmen Went The Northmen in America Queer Ideas Prince Henry the Navigator Youth of Columbus Columbus and the Queen "Land! Land!" Columbus and the Savages Home Again Columbus Ill-treated Death of Columbus How America Got its Name The Fountain of Youth "The Father of Waters" The French in Canada French and Spanish Quarrels The Sky City Around the World Nothing but Smoke Smith's Adventures The Jamestown Men Smith Wounded Pocahontas Visits England Hudson and the Indians The Mayflower Plymouth Rock The First Thanksgiving Snake Skin and Bullets The Beginning of Boston Stories of Two Ministers Williams and the Indians The Quakers The King-Killers King Phillip's War The Beginning of New York Penn and the Indians The Catholics in Maryland The Old Dominion Bacon's Rebellion A Journey Inland The Carolina Pirates Charter Oak Salem Witches Down the Mississippi La Salle's Adventures Indians on the Warpath Two Wars with the French Washington's Boyhood Washington's Journey Washington's First Battle Stories of Franklin Braddock's Defeat Wolfe at Quebec England and her Colonies The Stamp Tax The Anger of the Colonies The Boston Tea Party The Minutemen The Battle of Lexington Bunker Hill The Boston Boys The British leave Boston Declaration of Independence A Lady's Way of Helping Christmas Eve The Fight at Bennington Burgoyne's Surrender Winter at Valley Forge The Quaker Woman Putnam's Adventures Indian Cruelty Boone in Kentucky Famous Sea Fights The "Swamp Fox" The Poor Soldiers The Spy A Traitor's Death Two Unselfish Women Surrender of Cornwallis British Flag hauled down Washington's Farewell

Story of the Thirteen Colonies - Helene Guerber




The King-Killers

Cromwell having died in 1658, the English, most of whom were still greatly attached to the royal family, soon begged Charles II. to come back and take possession of his throne. He gladly returned to England, where he punished no one for the revolution, except the men who had condemned his father, Charles I., to death. A few of these king-killers, or "regicides," as they were called, fled from England as soon as they heard the king was coming, and three took passage for America.

Two of these men, Goffe and Whalley, after some trouble, reached the New Haven colony, where Puritan friends helped them to hide. The king sent orders to arrest them, and magistrates began to search every house to secure the regicides. For about eighteen years these two men lived in constant dread of being caught; but, thanks to their many friends, they always escaped. They dwelt for a while in a deserted mill, then in a cave, and once hid under a bridge while their pursuers galloped over it, expecting soon to overtake them.

The fact that the New Haven people had sheltered some of his father's judges, added to the complaints of the Quakers and discontented colonists, displeased Charles II. greatly; and he finally declared that New Haven should cease to form a separate colony, and joined it to Connecticut, which received a new charter (1662).

It is also said, however, that these two colonies were united mainly to please the Connecticut people, because they had won the king's favor by sending him a pretty message to welcome him back to the throne. The charter he gave them was the most liberal ever granted the colonists, although the one Roger Williams secured for Rhode Island also granted many privileges.

You doubtless remember the treaty made between the Indian King Massasoit and Governor Carver, when the Pilgrims first came to Plymouth. This treaty was kept forty years, and Massasoit and his tribe faithfully helped the colonists to fight the other Indians. But when Massasoit died, his two sons, who had received the names of Alexander and Philip, began to rule in their turn. .

Alexander knew, by the wampum belts which were the history books of his tribe, that nearly all the land of his Indian fathers had been sold to the white men, piece by piece. It had been given in exchange for beads, kettles, blankets, etc., and now very little was left. But the Indians fancied that, although they had sold the land, they could still hunt and fish there as much as they pleased. The colonists, however, would not allow them to do so, and drove the Indians farther and farther off, until they began to feel cramped for space.

It is said that when one of the colonists once came to bid an Indian chief to remove still farther from the white settlements, the red man invited him to take a seat beside him on a log. Crowding nearer and nearer his guest, the chief bade him move again and again, until he forced him to the very end of the log. But when the colonist declared he could not move another inch without falling off, the chief calmly answered: "It is just so with us. We have moved as far as we can go, and now you come here to ask us to move farther still."

This feeling of unfair treatment made Alexander so angry, at last, that he formed a secret alliance with the Narragansett Indians to kill all the white men. But the Plymouth governor, hearing of this, promptly sent for him, bidding him come and clear himself of the accusation of treachery. Then, as the Indian did not obey at once, Winslow quickly set out, with his men, to bring him by force.

Alexander, furious at being thus compelled to mind, fell seriously ill from fever. The colonists then allowed his followers to carry him home; but on the way back, the Indian chief breathed his last. Ever after, his people were in the habit of saying that he had gone to the Happy Hunting Grounds, where the palefaces could never come to crowd him out.