It was a murky childhood story. It was about three men--3 judges--who were in hiding. Legend had it that they hid in cellars and in traprock caves throughout our's and the neighboring towns. They were never found. We never really understood who, what, or why, as we were only children, and in our minds the story served only to invoke the theories & visions of three ghosts in 17th century garb who moved about the boulders and trees along the dark, wooded hillside behind our house. And then recently I came upon this book:

Stiles, Ezra. A history of the three judges of King Charles I. Major-General Whalley, Major-General Goffe, and Colonel Dixwell: Who, at the Restoration, 1660, fled to America; and were secreted and concealed, in Massachusetts and Connecticut, for near thirty years. With an account of Mr. Theophilus Whale, of Narragansett, supposed to have been also one of the judges.Hartford: Elisha Babcock, 1794. Full calf-leather binding with leather spine label. 16mo. First edition, first issue with errata slip pasted on final page of text. Illustrated with frontispiece portrait of Stiles and 8 engraved plates and maps by Amos Doolittle. As with all other copies of this book, this copy lacks the seventh plate which Wright Howes says was not issued. This book is a very interesting history written by the theologian and President of Yale regarding the three regicides Whalley, Goffe and Dixwell and their concealment in New Haven, Hadley (Mass.) and other New England towns during the restoration of Charles II. For the historian of cartography this book is quite remarkable. It contains the earliest map of Narragansett Bay printed in America, the first town plans of both Guilford and Milford, Conn. (printed on the same page) and the earliest map of Hadley, Mass. There is also a folding map of New Haven; a plate showing the Judge's Cave; a folding map of the lodgements of the Judges in Connecticut with an inset diagram showing the position of the Judge's supposed graves; a plan of New Haven; a folding plate showing the headstones of the graves, and another town plan of Hadley. The inside cover has the early ownership signature of one Lyman Robbins of Avon.

I never heard the Hadley part of the story, which is really amazing seeing that my office window overlooks the Hadley Common and the very spot where in 1660 they came to live out their lives in the cellar of the town founder, John Russell.Their concealment remained a secret until 120 years later when Whalley's bones were discovered by workmen who were removing stones from the cellar while renovating the Russell house.