WHALLEY, EDWARD (c. 1615–c. 1675), English regicide, was the second son of Richard Whalley, who had been sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1595, by his second wife Frances Cromwell, aunt of Oliver Cromwell. On the outbreak of the Civil War he took up arms for the parliament, became major of Cromwell's regiment of horse, and fought with distinction in the campaigns of 1643 to 1647. When the king was seized by the army, he was entrusted to the keeping of Whalley and his regiment at Hampton Court. Whalley refused to remove Charles's chaplains at the bidding of the parliamentary commissioners, and treated his captive with due courtesy, receiving from Charles after his flight a friendly letter of thanks. In the second Civil War, Whalley again distinguished himself as a soldier, and when the king was brought to trial he was chosen to be one of the tribunal and signed his death-warrant He took part in Crom well's Scottish expedition, was wounded at Dunbar, and in the autumn of 165o was active in dealing with the situation in north Britain. Next year he took part in Cromwell's pursuit of Charles II. and was in the fight at Worcester. He followed and supported his great kinsman in his political career, presented the army petition to parliament (August 1652), approved of the protecto rate, and represented Nottinghamshire in the parliaments of 1654 and 1656, taking an active part in the prosecution of the Quaker James Naylor. He was one of the administrative major-generals, and was responsible for Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Warwick and Leicester. He supported the "Petition and Advice," except as regards the proposed assumption of the royal title by Cromwell, and became a member of the newly constituted House of Lords in December 1657. On the Protector's death, at which he was
present, he in vain gave his support to Richard ; his regiment refused to obey his orders, and the Long Parliament dismissed him from his command as a representative of the army. In November 1659 he undertook an unsuccessful mission to Scotland to arrange terms with Monk. At the Restoration, Whalley, with his son-in-law, General William Goffe, escaped to America, and landed at Boston on July 27, 166o, living successively at New Haven and at Hadley, Massachusetts, the government at home failing to procure his arrest.
AuTHoRmEs.-An account of Whalley's life is in Mark Noble's Lives of the English Regicides, and also of his family in Noble's Memoirs of the Protectoral House of Cromwell, vol. ii. (1787, 2nd ed.) ; see besides Gardiner's and Clarendon's histories of the period; Peck's Desiderata curiosa (1779 ; Whalley's account of the king's flight) ; Ezra Stiles's History of three of the Judges of Charles I. (1794, etc.). The article by C. H. Firth in the Dict. Nat. Biog. is an admirable summary. Whalley's sojourn in America is dealt with in numerous papers pub lished by the Massachusetts Historical Society, and in the Hutchinson Papers published (1865) by the Prince Society ; see also Atlantic Monthly, vi. 89-93 ; Pennsylvania Mag., i. 55-66, 23o, 359 ; F. B. Dexter's Memoranda concerning Whalley and Goffe, New Haven Col. Hist. Soc. Papers, ii. (1877) ; Poem commemorative of Goffe, Whalley and Dixwell, with abstract of their history, by Philagathos (Boston, 1793) ; Palfrey's Hist. of New England, ii. (1866) ; Notes and Queries, 5th series, viii. 359 (bibliography of American works on the regicides).