Three more names – Jones, Holland and Scott – were added by the Commons to the list of the doomed. Thomas Skipwith, the MP for Grantham, proposed that the seventh should be Ludlow; however nobody seconded him. It was at this point that the reviled Colonel John Barkstead was suggested and promptly included. Oliver Cromwell had once complimented Barkstead with the words that: ‘There never was any design on foot but we could hear of it out of the Tower.’2 For the new regime it was time for vengeance against one of the Lord Protector’s trusty henchmen. Ludlow’s relief at his exclusion from the list of seven was short-lived as calls for more wide-ranging vengeance grew in the heady days of resurrected Royalism. Soon Parliament was insisting that every one of the late King’s judges hand themselves in within fourteen days, or lose their lives and possessions. Ludlow learnt of this deeply troubling development first hand: he heard the news being proclaimed to the listening crowds in the street outside his quarters. He carefully monitored the effect of this decree, weighing up whether to follow the surrender of twenty-two of his colleagues in mid- to late June, or to join the dash for seeming safety overseas that required separation from loved ones and property.
Ludlow hung back from making the decision. He asked his friends and relations what they thought he should do. Several thought surrender the safer course; others refused to give any opinion on a question that involved his life or death, but they suggested caution. There was one contact, unnamed but well informed, who firmly advised that surrender should not be contemplated: it was too dangerous an option, he insisted, given the growing desire in Charles II’s court for extensive retribution.
Ludlow realised that he would need to tidy up his business affairs, whether he chose to flee or not: if he was to run, he would need funds; if he was to surrender, he would have to account for his estate as a prelude to the inevitable financial penalty. A straightening out of his finances would not be possible if he was in hiding. He therefore decided to promise to hand himself in.
At the same time Ludlow prepared a written defence of his past deeds. He sent its completed draft to Arthur Annesley, a leading MP, for his comments. Having read it, Annesley advised Elizabeth Ludlow that it did not go far enough: it did not admit guilt. ‘My wife told him,’ recorded the lieutenant general, ‘that what was contained in that paper was as much as my conscience would give me leave to say.’3 In that case, Annesley cautioned, it would be better to say nothing: not to admit guilt would be seen as seeking to justify the unjustifiable. This, in turn, would inflame the vengeful.
Ludlow looked to others for advice. His military service had brought him into conflict with James Butler, then the Marquess of Ormonde, the Royalist leader in Ireland whose inadequate defences had been no match for Cromwell a decade earlier. Over time, Ormonde and Ludlow had developed a mutual respect, which the Parliamentarian hoped to exploit now. Ormonde had endured years of hard exile with the Prince of Wales on the Continent prior to the Restoration. His rewards, now Charles was King, included a dukedom and the office of Lord High Steward of England.
Ludlow sent his wife to ask Ormonde what his best course of action would be. ‘He received her with great civilities,’ Ludlow recorded, ‘and made her large promises, pressing her with great importunity to acquaint him, if I were in England.’4 Elizabeth Ludlow, sensing her host was looking to secure her husband rather than save him, refused to answer. She concluded that Ormonde was not to be trusted.
At this stage Ludlow felt more inclined to surrender than not. But the knowledgeable friend who had insisted that real peril awaited those who handed themselves in now reiterated his advice. He warned that the mood in the Lords was more severe than in the Commons: there was an appetite in the Upper House for many more men to suffer. This flew in the face of advice that Ludlow’s wife was receiving elsewhere: Sir Harbottle Grimston, Speaker of the House of Commons, told Elizabeth he felt certain that none would be held to account beyond those already named. If Parliament went back on its word on such a point, he said, ‘it would be the most horrid thing in the world’.5 Grimston promised to sound out other important members, and soon reported back that these men shared his optimism. The Speaker repeated his recommendation to Elizabeth that Ludlow hand himself in during what remained of the window of opportunity offered by the proclamation. He passed her a letter that guaranteed Ludlow’s safety, as he made his way to surrender.
After bringing the majority of his affairs up to date, Ludlow proceeded to the Speaker’s Chamber to hand himself in. Finding Grimston absent, Ludlow went with James Herbert, an MP in the new Parliament who was a friend, to turn himself over to the serjeant-at-arms. There, Herbert pledged a bond of £3,000 to guarantee Ludlow’s appearance in front of the authorities, when required. Eager to free Herbert from this potentially ruinous commitment, Ludlow arranged for his bond to be substituted with one made by four others. These were men who he knew could never be successfully pursued for debt: a penniless Royalist uncle; a colonel – recently knighted by the new King – whose apparent fortune was in reality owned by his wife; another acquaintance, who was thought rich, but who had secretly fallen on hard times; and his tailor. Ludlow rewarded the first two of the four with a little, welcome, cash. To all appearances the lieutenant general had obeyed the royal proclamation, but in truth he had pulled off a sleight of hand: his finances were in good order, while his options remained open.
Ludlow was unable to rest. He heard persistent rumours that Monck and his wife, the Duchess of Albermarle (whom Ludlow referred as ‘the dirty duchess’, and whom he viewed as the epitome of self-serving greed), were adamant that he be added to the register of the doomed. Monck was said to have warned Charles II that Edmund Ludlow was the most dangerous man in the land: as such, he must not be allowed to remain at large.
Of even greater concern to Ludlow was word secretly sent to him by Secretary of State Sir William Morice, an academic cousin of Monck’s, whose promotion to a position of great power after the Restoration had surprised many. Morice had been one of the members excluded from the Commons by Pride’s Purge. He and Ludlow had since found common ground in their resistance to Oliver Cromwell’s rule. Believing the lieutenant general to be still in hiding, he told a mutual friend to advise Ludlow to keep up his guard, and at all costs to remain at large – for, if captured, he would be a dead man.
It was while finalising his financial affairs that Ludlow received a fresh alarm. Sir Charles Coote, who had tricked Chief Justice John Cook into capture in Ireland, now refused to comply with requests from Ludlow’s brother to deliver up stock that belonged to the lieutenant general. Eager to be rid of his tiresome creditor, Coote wrote a letter to the King, blackening Ludlow’s name. Coote claimed that, at a dinner at Ludlow’s home, his host had claimed to be the man who had forced Cromwell to proceed to Charles I’s execution. Coote told the King that, if he needed confirmation that this conversation had taken place, he should check with another present, Lord Broghill. But Broghill refused to corroborate Coote’s story, saying it was ungentlemanly ‘to remember any thing to the prejudice of a gentleman who had spoken freely at his own table’.6
Ludlow now warned the four men who had stood bail for him that if he felt his life in any greater danger than it already was, he would be forced to flee. While Parliament was sitting, when any changes to the Bill of Indemnity could be sudden and fatal, Ludlow placed armed guards on each of the gates to his home – though he rarely stayed there, preferring to lie up at a secret address. Meanwhile he took daily soundings from his friends in the Commons as to which way the chill wind of revenge was blowing.
The Bill of Indemnity picked up renewed energy when it reached the Lords. Their lordships were keen to hear from Royalists whose relatives had been executed under the Commonwealth. They were particularly moved by the words of two widows: one had been married to Charles I’s chaplain, Dr Hewett, who had been beheaded for treason in 1658; the other was Arundel Penruddock, whose husband had lost his head following a failed uprising in 1655. Ther
e were so many other Royalists seeking satisfaction for the loss of loved ones that a committee had to be appointed to sift through their applications. The Lords also wanted to avenge those of their number who had been tried and executed during the previous decade and a half – especially those dispatched after the Second Civil War, in the wake of the King’s death. They allowed the next of kin of each of those slain lords to select one judge from their relatives’ trial: that man would atone for his actions with his life.
Ludlow’s friends became increasingly shrill in their advice to him. Sir John Winter, private secretary to Charles I’s widow, Henrietta Maria, warned him that there was now a move to exclude all the King’s judges from the benefit of the Bill of Indemnity. Indeed, Winter cautioned, Ludlow had become a particular figure of hatred in royal circles, since Monck had shared with the King his belief that Ludlow’s military power in Ireland had threatened the viability of the Restoration.
It was while digesting this latest warning that Ludlow learnt with bemused disbelief that two of his fellow regicides were to be excused their part in Charles I’s trial and execution. He accepted with sadness that it was Colonel Ingoldsby’s treacherous capture of Major General Lambert (in the stand that Ludlow had been too slow, through caution, to join) that had secured his pardon. Ludlow was more bewildered by Colonel Hutchinson’s forgiveness, since Ludlow clearly remembered that Hutchinson ‘had been as zealous against the late King, at the time of his trial, as any other of his judges’.7 Ludlow suspected that, in addition to his timely apologies and justifications in the Commons, Hutchinson must have come to some secret agreement with Monck; otherwise, his being spared was impossible to comprehend.
During the summer of 1660, while factions in the Lords and the Commons traded favours, adding and subtracting names from the list of the condemned, Ludlow wrote a robust, anonymous, paper confirming the rights to be enjoyed by those – such as himself – who had surrendered under the terms of the proclamation. Among the points he made was a rejection of the Commons’s ability to increase the number of those to suffer beyond the agreed and advertised seven. Ludlow asked Henry Marten to read through his points and comment on them as a lawyer. Marten advised that the paper, as constructed, would be deemed libellous: rather than being presented as factual, he suggested that it would be preferable if Ludlow submitted his case in the form of a personal petition. This was too dangerous a course for Ludlow to contemplate.
As the summer passed, the eagerness of the regicides to know their fate was matched by the king’s growing impatience at the lack of progress in holding his father’s killers to account. When senior courtiers failed to force the Lords to a conclusion, Charles II appeared in the House to address its members in person. He reminded his audience that those who had judged his father ‘were guilty of such a crime, that they could not pardon themselves, much less expect it from others’.8 To Ludlow such regal interference was an outrageous violation of parliamentary privilege. It also underlined the King’s determination to see all the regicides brought to punishment. ‘Finding my friends to grow every day more apprehensive of the dangers that threatened me,’ Ludlow wrote, ‘I removed from my house; and on this occasion received a signal testimony of the friendship of Chief Justice Coke [John Cook], who being little solicitous for himself, solemnly protested in a message he sent me, that if he were in no hazard on this occasion, he would willingly lay down his life to secure mine, who he was pleased to say, might be more useful to the public, than he could hope to be.’9
The seizure and imprisonment in the Tower of various Scottish and Irish noblemen who had come to London to pay homage to the new King added to Ludlow’s fears. The diplomatic prince, who had soothed his subjects with overtures of harmony from Breda, was revealing himself to be a man of vengeance. He was now safely installed on the throne, with members of the House of Lords baying for regicide blood. The terms and spirit of the original proclamation, that offered two weeks in which to surrender without fear of a loss of life, continued to be undermined. The Earl of Southampton, appalled at this injustice, proposed that it was only fair to give those who had, in good faith, handed themselves in, a fresh two weeks in which they could flee. This suggestion was overruled by Sir Heneage Finch.
Sir John Bourchier, a Puritan who had attended all four days of Charles I’s trial and then signed the death warrant, was one of those who had submitted to the proclamation in the permitted timeframe. The sixty-five-year-old was suffering from plummeting health, and so was allowed to be looked after at the home of one of his daughters. His family realised that death was imminent. They were fearful that if he died while still accused of high treason, all of his property would be liable to confiscation. They encouraged him to repent publicly for his actions, in the hope that forgiveness might secure his estate for them.
For several days Bourchier sat in a chair, his life ebbing away. Suddenly, he forced himself to his feet and gave a clear and determined justification of the moment that would define his life: ‘I tell you it was a just act! God and all good men will own it.’10 Then he slumped back, wearied by his defiant last words: soon afterwards he died.
Meanwhile Ludlow decided to absent himself from Westminster. He moved down the Thames to Richmond, where he enjoyed the summer days walking in the deer park – grounds created a quarter of a century earlier by Charles I, the man he had helped send to his death. While in Richmond he heard of the frantic horse-trading in Westminster, as the Bill of Indemnity at last neared its completion. Charles II’s advisers were increasing pressure on the Commons to commit to punishing all the late King’s judges. Ludlow heard that the chancellor, Lord Clarendon, had offered that those named by the Lords would only be punished if a later Act of Parliament deemed it necessary. The chancellor meanwhile insisted that any of Charles I’s judges who had surrendered, then went back on their word would not be considered for clemency – ‘which last clause,’ Ludlow wrote, ‘I took to be particularly levell’d at me, having been informed that the serjeant’s deputy, attended with soldiers, had very lately searched my house.’11
The Commons buckled, agreeing to hand over to the Lieutenant of the Tower of London all who had yielded in good faith to the House’s serjeant-at-arms. From being men on bail, sure of their lives, the surrendered men now found themselves confined to the nation’s most dreaded prison, from where traitors rarely emerged alive.
Ludlow’s failure to appear at this point meant he could now be added to the list of those who would answer for their crimes with their life. However, the authorities had no idea where he was. They decided to lure him in rather than frighten him off, and claimed they would carefully examine the terms of his bail before acting against him. In the meantime, they said he would be best served by handing himself in.
Elizabeth Ludlow revisited Grimston to gauge afresh what, now, was the best way ahead for her husband. The Speaker repeated his earlier advice that Ludlow must surrender. Mrs Ludlow countered that she thought this a very dangerous course, given the extent to which the Commons had already yielded to royal pressure. Surely yet more concessions were likely to follow? And, she went on, what was to stop the current House of Commons from being replaced by another, whose members might vote through even stricter retribution against the Stuarts’ historic foes? ‘The Speaker seemed much offended with this discourse,’ Ludlow wrote, ‘and going down the stairs with her, told her he would wash his hands of my blood, by assuring her, that if I would surrender myself, my life would be as safe as his own; but if I refused to harken to his advice, and should happen to be seized, I was likely to be the first man they would execute, and she to be left the poorest widow in England.’12
But the advice Ludlow was receiving from other more trusted parts of the enemy camp was consistent: his life was in peril. After weeks of uncertainty, he now knew it was time to escape.
Ludlow sent a letter explaining his decision to Speaker Grimston, and ‘told him that he had withdrawn himself, not out of distaste to the House of Commons up
on whose words he had rendered himself’, reported Sir Thomas Gower, a Royalist who had raised a regiment for Charles I during the Civil War, ‘but that he saw blood was thirsted for by those, who hardly ever had attempted to draw any in either sort, and that [they] attempted to invade the liberties of the Commons of England, of which he hoped they would be careful; that whenever the House of Commons signified their pleasure, and that they would maintain what they had promised, upon notice left at a place he named, he would readily return to the place from whence he left.’13
Ludlow let his family and closest friends know his decision. He told them he would be using his mother’s maiden name as an alias; when they heard from him next it would be as ‘Edmund Phillips’. Wearing a new beard as a disguise, he said his goodbyes, unaware of when or if he would see them again. With evening descending, he was taken by coach through James’s Fields (which would soon be built on, and become St James’s Square), and into the City, passing over London Bridge. At St George’s Church, Southwark, he was met by a guide leading a spare horse. The two men then headed south, towards the coast, travelling by lesser roads, avoiding towns, and steering clear of places where soldiers might be: the military would be looking out for fleeing regicides, and many of them would know the distinguished lieutenant general by sight.
The fugitive and his guide rode through the night, safely reaching the Sussex town of Lewes by daybreak. There Ludlow boarded a shallop, a small covered boat, but sea swell forced a switch to another craft until conditions improved. (This second vessel had a recent history that must have encouraged Ludlow, for he learnt that it had already successfully spirited away another leading Parliamentarian, Oliver Cromwell’s heir, Richard.) The squall was so strong that it made this new vessel run aground on the sand. It was now that a Royalist search party appeared. They inspected the covered boat, but decided against approaching the one beached on the sandbank, feeling sure that a boat in such a condition must be empty.
Killers of the King Page 21
