Edmund Ludlow

Edmund Ludlow , he himself wrote Ludlowe, (* around 1617 in Maiden Bradley , Wiltshire , † 1692 in Vevey , Switzerland ) was an English parliamentarian and general.

Edmund Ludlow 1689

Life

Ludlow was the son of the landlord, Sheriff of Wiltshire and Member of Parliament Sir Henry Ludlow (1592-1643). After studying at Oxford at Trinity College (1634 to 1636) he was admitted to the bar and in 1638 to the Inner Temple .

During the English Civil War he volunteered in the Life Guards of the Earl of Essex and participated in the Powick Bridge Skirmish near Worcester and the Battle of Edgehill . In 1643 he went back to Wiltshire and became captain of the cavalry under Edward Hungerford and governor of Wardour Castle after it was conquered by Hungerford, which he had to hand over to the royalists (Francis Doddington) in March 1644 after a three-month siege. After a prisoner exchange in May 1644 he was a major in a cavalry regiment under Arthur Hesilridge. He took part in the Second Battle of Newbury in October 1644, in the siege of Basing House near Basingstoke in November 1644 and in December in the relief of Taunton , besieged by royalists but held by Robert Blake . He narrowly escaped a surprise attack on his regiment in January 1645. Hesilridge recommended him to command his own regiment, but Ludlow initially pursued a political career.

From 1645 he was High Sherriff of Wiltshire and succeeded his father for Wiltshire in the English Parliament. There he represented radical Puritan views and was one of the independents who advocated strict separation of church and state, and sympathized with the Levellers . He advocated the purge of potential royalists ( Pride's Purge ) in 1648 and the arrest and execution of King Charles I in January 1649 (he was one of its judges and signed the death sentence). He was then a member of the newly established Council of State of the Commonwealth of England .

In June 1650 Oliver Cromwell appointed him as lieutenant general deputy commander of the parliamentary army under Henry Ireton , which should complete the conquest of Ireland begun by Cromwell. He took part in the siege of Limerick 1650/51 and took over after the death of Ireton in November 1651, the command, which he held until October 1652, when he gave it to Charles Fleetwood . Before that, he himself accepted the final submission of the Irish in Galway in May 1652.

Ludlow stood by Cromwell when he dissolved the rump parliament in 1653 , but broke with him when he appointed himself lord protector in December 1653. In Dublin he opposed the proclamation of the protectorate and then resigned from his civil functions. Cromwell avoided public confrontation and left him with his military rank, but ordered him back to England in October 1655. He was briefly arrested (Cromwell personally sought a meeting with Ludlow on December 12th in Whitehall, who insisted the Protectorate was illegal and contrary to the aims of the Civil War) before he was allowed to retreat to the country, but not to his native Wiltshire . He was only after the death of Cromwell in 1658 again in the newly convened rump parliament (for Hindon 1659), a member of the State Council and part of the committee for the appointment of military commanders. 1659 to 1660 he was again commander-in-chief in Ireland. He played a role in the party disputes over the future parliamentary orientation of England, but was in Ireland when George Monck usurped the reins in 1660 in favor of a restoration of the Stuarts under Charles II . Since his life as one of the signatories of Charles I's death sentence was in danger, he fled via France to Switzerland, where he was granted protection - although his life was still threatened (the regicide John Lisle, who fled with him, was murdered in Lausanne in 1664 ). After the Glorious Revolution in 1688, he returned to England, but continued to see himself threatened with arrest and fled to Switzerland again.

In exile he wrote an autobiography (A voice from the watch tower), which first appeared in three volumes in Vevey in 1698/99 (further editions followed, for example in 1720 and 1751). It was long considered an important source until part of the original manuscript appeared in Warwick Castle (now the Bodleian Library ) in the 1970s, showing that the autobiography was heavily edited by the first editors in the 17th century (likely John Toland ). They suppressed his radical Puritan views and turned him into a secular partisan of the Whigs .

Fonts

• The memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, Lieutenant-General of the Horse in the army of the Commonwealth of England , 1625–1672, published by Charles Harding Firth , Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2 volumes, 1894, volume 1 , volume 2
  • New edition based on the original manuscript by Blair Worden 1978, A voyce from the watch tower , Royal Historical Society, London.
• Between 1691 and 1693 four pamphlets appeared in his name (including Truth brought to light, or, The gross forgeries of Dr. Hollingworth in his pamphlet intituled The character of King Charles the First , London 1693), but these probably do not go back to Ludlow .

literature

• Article in Dictionary of National Biography by Charles Harding Firth, revised by Blair Worden
• Maurice Ashley Cromwell's Generals , London 1954

Web links

• Biography, British Civil War Project

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Powick Bridge Skirmish
2. ^ Blair Worden: Roundhead reputations: the English Civil Wars and the passions of posterity , 2001
3. ↑ He had strong religious beliefs with Baptist influence.