Description:
Black and white engraved print titled: "GENERAL GOFFE REPULSING THE INDIANS AT HADLEY." with "E.H. Corbould." in the left and "J. Stephenson." in the right corners. Edward Henry Corbould (1815-1905) was an English painter and illustrator; and James Stephenson was an engraver born in Ireland and working in Philadelphia in 1850. The title refers to a mythic event - an alleged Indian raid in Hadley, Massachusetts, in August, 1675, during "King Philip's War." In his "History of Deerfield", George Sheldon says: "The news of the first attack .....reached Hadley while the inhabitants were assembled in the meetinghouse observing a fast, and Mather says they 'were driven from the holy service by a most sudden and violent alarm, which routed them from the whole day after.' This brief allusion of the historian to the alarm at Hadley on hearing of the assault on Deerfield, is the slender foundation on which was built the elaborate account, that has gone into accepted history, of a furious attack on Hadley that day, when the town was only saved from destruction by the appearance and valor of Gen. Goffe, one of the Regicides." William Goffe (1605?-1679/80) and Edward Whalley (d.1675?), his father-in-law and Cromwell's cousin, were two of Oliver Cromwell's ten Major-Generals and two of the 59 judges (called regicides or king killers) who signed Charles I's death warrent. With Cromwell's fall in 1660, Charles II issued royal writ for their arrest/death; they fled to Boston where there were many Puritan sympathizers. After London ordered Governor John Endicott to arrest them, they hid in New Haven and Milford, Conn., for three years, and in 1664 moved to Hadley where they lived secretly with Rev. John Russell (1626-1692) until their deaths. Goffe later became known as the “Angel of Hadley,” and his alleged actions were popularized in early 19th-century fiction. The best known works perpetuating the myth are James Fenimore Cooper’s The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish (1829), and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Gray Champion” in Twice Told Tales (1837). These authors and others attempted to establish a national literature that would stand out as “American” and define the New England spirit. The print depicts a scene of carnage in a forest glen with white-haired and bearded Goffe in 17th century dress in the center and other roughly dressed men carrying long bore rifles and swords repulsing a small band of Indians who have spears bows and arrows.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+1998.19 |
