The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Dixwell, John

DIXWELL, John, English regicide: b. 1608; d. 18 March 1689, in 1646 he was elected member for Dover in the House of Commons, was one of the judges who condemned Charles I to death and signed the warrant. After the reaction in England which placed Charles II upon the throne, and caused himself and his associates in the trial to be excepted from the general pardon, he escaped to America, changed his name, taking that of John Davids, and lived undiscovered among the inhabitants of New Haven, where he was married and left children. In 1664 he visited two of his fellow regicides, Whalley and Goffe, who had found a refuge amid the solitudes of Hadley, Mass. His favorite study in exile was Raleigh's ‘History of the World,’ and he cherished a constant faith that the spirit of liberty in England would produce a new revolution. Consult Stiles, ‘History of Three of the Judges of Charles I: Whalley, Goffe and Dixwell’ (Hartford 1794).