{"id":326,"date":"2024-04-02T20:26:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T20:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/?p=326"},"modified":"2026-04-16T20:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T20:42:12","slug":"act-of-oblivion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/?p=326","title":{"rendered":"Act of Oblivion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By Robert Harris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>&#8216;From what is it they flee?&#8217;<\/em><br><em>He took a while to reply. By the time he spoke the men had gone inside. He said quietly, &#8216;They killed the King.&#8217;<\/em><br><br>1660. Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross the Atlantic. Having been found guilty of high treason for the murder of Charles the I, they are wanted and on the run. A reward hangs over their heads &#8211; for their capture, dead or alive.<br><br>In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is tasked with tracking down the fugitives. He&#8217;ll stop at nothing until the two men are brought to justice.<br><br><em>Act of Oblivion<\/em>\u00a0is an epic journey across continents, and a chase like no other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This book is a fictional telling of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Execution_of_Charles_I_of_England\">execution<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_I_of_England\">King Charles I <\/a>and the return of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_II_of_England\">King Charles II<\/a> and the subsequent hunt for the 59 &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_regicides_of_Charles_I_of_England\">regicides<\/a>&#8216; &#8211; the men who signed the execution warrant.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"320\" height=\"158\" src=\"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/charles_I_warrant.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-327\" style=\"width:506px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/charles_I_warrant.jpeg 320w, https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/charles_I_warrant-300x148.jpeg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whilst the book is fiction, clearly many of the characters are real as are some of the events described. It&#8217;s an interesting story and one I was unfamiliar with- Cromwell and the New Model Army. It was also around this time that there was a plague and the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Great_Fire_of_London\">Great Fire of London.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"298\" height=\"169\" src=\"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/great_fire.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-328\" style=\"width:458px;height:auto\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It also includes the new Puritan Colonies that are being established in America, and especially the tale of two of the regicides &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/William_Goffe\">William Goffe<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Edward_Whalley\">Edward Whalley<\/a> who fled in 1660 to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Massachusetts_Bay_Colony\">Massachusetts Bay Colony<\/a>\u00a0and ultimately New Haven after their involvement in the 1649\u00a0regicide of King Charles I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Robert Harris. &#8216;From what is it they flee?&#8217;He took a while to reply. By the time he spoke the men had gone inside. He said quietly, &#8216;They killed the King.&#8217; 1660. Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,45,3,17,18,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christianity","category-civil-war","category-fiction","category-history","category-military","category-stuarts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/act_of_oblivion-1.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idrisstone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}