Everything about Edmund Ludlow totally explained
Edmund Ludlow (c. 1617 – 1692) was an
English parliamentarian, best known for his involvement in the execution of
Charles I, and for his
Memoirs, which were published posthumously in a rewritten form and which have become a major source for historians of the
Wars of the Three Kingdoms. After service in the
English Civil Wars, Ludlow was elected a
Member of the
Long Parliament. After the establishment of the
Commonwealth in 1649 he was made second-in-command of Parliament's forces in
Ireland, before breaking with
Oliver Cromwell over the establishment of the
Protectorate. After the
Restoration Ludlow went into exile in Switzerland, where he spent much of the rest of his life. Ludlow himself spelled his name Ludlowe.
Early life
Ludlow was born in Maiden Bradley, Wiltshire, the son of Sir Henry Ludlow of Maiden Bradley and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Phelips of
Montacute, Somerset. He matriculated at
Trinity College, Oxford in September 1634 and graduated in 1636. He was admitted to the
Inner Temple in 1638.
English Civil Wars
When the
Great Rebellion broke out in 1642, Ludlow engaged as a volunteer in the life guard of
Lord Essex. His first battle was at
Worcester on 23 September 1642, his next at
Edgehill on 23 October 1642. In 1643 he returned to Wiltshire and became captain of a troop of horse for Sir Edward Hungerford's regiment. Hungerford made him governor of
Wardour Castle in 1643, but had to surrender to the
Royalists after a tenacious three-month defence on March 18, 1644.
After a brief imprisonment in Oxford, he was exchanged soon afterwards, and engaged as major of Sir
Arthur Hesilrige's regiment of horse. He was present at the
second battle of Newbury, October 1644, at the
siege of
Basing House in November, and took part in an expedition to relieve
Taunton in December. In January 1645 Sir Marmaduke Langdale surprised his regiment, with Ludlow only escaping with difficulty. In 1646 he was elected
Member of Parliament (MP) for
Wilts in place of his father, and became involved with the Indepedent faction within Parliament - especially with Henry Marten and other radical critics of the monarchy. Ludlow was a Baptist and
Calvinist predestinarian, and his political views were inextricably interlinked with providentialist and apocalyptic religious views.
Ludlow opposed negotiations with Charles I, and was one of the chief promoters of
Pride's Purge in 1648. He was one of the king's judges, and signed the warrant for his execution. In February 1649 he was elected a member of the new Council of State after having himself been involved in drawing up the terms for its existence. Around this time he also married Elizabeth Thomas of Glamorgan.
Campaign in Ireland
After
Oliver Cromwell's return from Ireland in June 1650, Cromwell appointed Ludlow as lieutenant-general of horse and second-in-command to
Henry Ireton in
Parliament's campaign there. Here he spared neither health nor money in the public service. He landed in Ireland in January 1651 and was involved in the
Siege of Limerick (1650-51) . After Ireton's death on 26 November 1651, Ludlow then held the chief command, and had practically completed the conquest of the island when he resigned his authority to
Fleetwood in October 1652. Most of his campaigning in Ireland was against Irish guerrillas or "tories" and much of his operations consisted of hunting small bands and destroying foodstuff and crops.
Ludlow is remembered for what he said of the
Burren in
County Clare during counter-guerilla operations there in 1651-52; "
It is a country where there isn't enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him."
The Protectorate
Though disapproving of Cromwell's action in dissolving the
Rump Parliament in April 1653, Ludlow maintained his employment. However, when Cromwell was declared
Lord Protector after the failure of
Barebone's Parliament he declined to acknowledge his authority. On returning to England in October 1655 he was arrested, and on refusing to submit to the government was allowed to retire to Essex. After Oliver Cromwell's death Ludlow was returned for Hindon in
Richard's parliament of 1659, but opposed the continuance of the protectorate. He sat in the restored
Rump, and was a member of its Council of State and of the Committee of Safety after its second expulsion, and a commissioner for the nomination of officers in the army.
In July he was sent to Ireland as commander-in-chief. Returning in October 1659, he endeavored to support the failing republican cause by reconciling the army to the parliament. In December he returned hastily to Ireland to suppress a movement in favour of the Long Parliament, but on arrival found himself almost without supporters. He came back to England in January 1660, and was met by an impeachment presented against him to the restored parliament. His influence and authority had now disappeared, and all chance of regaining them vanished with General
John Lambert's failure to stop General
George Monck's army from reaching London in support of the
English Restoration.
Exile after the Restoration
Ludlow took his seat in the
Convention Parliament as member for
Hindon, but his election was annulled on May 18 after the parliament ruled that all those that had been judges of Charles I during his trial should be arrested. Ludlow wasn't protected under the
Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion Act. Accordingly, on the proclamation of the king ordering the regicides to come in, Ludlow emerged from his concealment, and on June 20 surrendered to the Speaker; but finding that his life wasn't assured, he succeeded in escaping to
Dieppe, France, travelled to
Geneva and
Lausanne, and thence to
Vevey. On 16 April 1662 the canton of
Bern granted Ludlow and two fellow fugitives, Lisle and Cawley, an act of protection allowing them to live in the canton. His wife joined him in 1663. For security he adopted the pseudonym of Edmund Phillips, based on a variant of his mother's maiden name.
After the
Glorious Revolution of 1688 opened up the prospect of a return, in 1689 Ludlow came back to England. He was however remembered only as a regicide, and an address from the
House of Commons was presented to
William III by
Sir Edward Seymour requesting the king to issue a proclamation for his arrest. Ludlow escaped again, and returned to Vevey, where he died in 1692.
Reputation and writings
A monument raised to Ludlow's memory by his widow is in the church of St Martin in Vevey. Over the door of the house in which he lived was placed the inscription "omne solum forti patria, quia patris". This is a Christianized version of a line by
Ovid meaning "to the brave man every land is a fatherland because God his father made it". Ludlow married Elizabeth, daughter of William Thomas, of Wenvoe, Glamorganshire, but left no children.
During his exile Ludlow wrote an autobiography entitled
A voyce from the watch tower. After his death his manuscript was obtained by
Slingsby Bethel, who had visited him in Switzerland. Part of it, covering the years 1660–77, was discovered at
Warwick Castle in 1970 and is now in the
Bodleian Library. A heavily rewritten and shortened version of
A voyce appeared as
The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow in 1698–9 in three volumes. The historian
Blair Worden has surmised that the editor was the
deist John Toland. The
Memoirs were part of a range of late seventeenth-century publications printed by John Darby, including the
Discourses of
Algernon Sidney and the works of
John Milton and
James Harrington. In the
Memoirs Ludlow's puritanism is virtually written out, and his views changed to make him a
Whig-like secular republican. Until the 1970s the
Memoirs were generally assumed to be authentic - there were editions in 1720-22, 1751, and 1771, with a scholarly edition by
C.H. Firth in 1895. As a result the Memoirs have been used until very recently as a major source for historians of the seventeenth century, with only the rediscovery of Ludlow's original manuscript prompting a reassessment.
In 1691–3 four pamphlets were published in Ludlow's name. Like the
Memoirs after them, they a were contribution to the Whig cause. Contemporaries variously attributed them to Slingsby Bethel, John Phillips (Milton's nephew), Thomas Percival, and John Toland.
Footnotes
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