GOFFE, WILLIAM ( ?-c.1679). An English regicide, born in Sussex, where his father was the rector of a church at Stammer. He was appren ticed to a salter in London, when, in 1642, he was imprisoned for circulating a petition for the Parliamentary cause. In 1645 he was com missioned a captain in the New Model army, in which, by his zeal and bravery, he won rapid promotion. He was one of the judges at the trial of Charles I., and signed the death warrant. He commanded Cromwell's old regiment at the battle of Dunbar, and distinguished himself at Worcester. In 1653 he participated in the ex pulsion of the Barebones Parliament. He was himself elected to Parliament in 1654, and was promoted major-general in 1655, with command in Sussex, Berkshire, and Hampshire. In 1636 he supported the proposition to offer the crown to Cromwell. by whom he was appointed a mem ber of the newly constituted House of Lords. His high position in the ranks of Cromwell's supporters led him to he looked upon as a pos sible successor to the Protector; hut on the ap pointment of Richard Cromwell to that office, he gave the latter his unqualified support. At
the Restoration he was excepted from the Act of Indemnity, and escaped with his father-in-law, General Whalley, to America, settling first at Cambridge, and thence, in order to escape arrest, removing to Connecticut, where he lived in re tirement in New Haven and various towns in the Connecticut River Valley. In 1664 he re moved to Hadley, Mass., where, according to the tradition, he appeared on the occasion of an In dian attack upon the town in 1675, rallied the frightened townsmen, and drove off the raiders. This incident has been used by Scott in his Peveril of the Peak, and by Cooper in his Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, or The Borderers, and forms the subject of "The Gray Champion" in Haw thorne's Twice-Told Tales. He died, probably, in 1679. Consult Stiles, history of Three of the Judges of King Charles I. (Hartford, 1794).