LUDLOWE, Edmund I (1595-1666), of Kingston Deverill, Wilts.

The third son of the notably irascible Sir Edmund Ludlowe†, this man seems to have been free of the quarrelsome, violent and litigious propensities which marred the careers and fortunes of his father, his elder half-brother Henry Ludlow I†, and his full brother Sir Henry Ludlow II*. After education at Oxford and the Inner Temple he appears to have lived a quiet life, probably assisted by the generous settlement of land by his father which he enjoyed later: his younger brother Humphrey was similarly provided for at an early age.14LPL MS 3476, f. 96. While in the 1630s he may have lived both at Kingston Deverill, which was close to the parliamentary borough of Hindon, and in Chancery Lane, his chief residence was with Sir Henry.15PROB11/322/363; Bodl. Eng. hist. c. 487, p. 1176. There is no evidence before the civil wars of the engagement in public life which had characterised his family since at least the fifteenth century. Indeed, most of his career is overshadowed either by that of his celebrated nephew Edmund Ludlowe II* of Maiden Bradley, or by that of another nephew, Edmund Ludlow (c.1609-44) of Hill Deverill, brother of William Ludlowe*, who also attended the Inner Temple and whose disputes with his siblings over inheritance came to the notice of the privy council.16s.v. ‘William Ludlowe’. From the later 1640s, however, the subject of this article was routinely distinguished as ‘senior’, while Ludlowe II was ‘Colonel’ or ‘junior’.

In a war that united the hitherto divided Wiltshire Ludlows, Ludlowe I shared the parliamentarian sympathies of his brothers Sir Henry and Benjamin (who died a prisoner of royalists) and of his many nephews who fought for the cause. Although not visible among local activists in 1642, he was named to the county committee and as an assessment commissioner in 1644.17LJ vi. 637; A. and O. Ludlowe II remarked that his uncle entered matrimony for the first time in his fifties, and if, as seems plausible, the latter was the man who married Jane Stephens in Shipton Moyne, Gloucestershire, in May 1645, this may have represented in part the cementing of political alliances.18Shipton Moyne, Glos. par. reg.; Bodl. Eng. hist. c. 487, p. 1176. It was the home parish of Thomas Hodges*, a fellow member of the county committee and a friend of Nathaniel Stephens* and his kin. Possibly it was for ideological as well as for family reasons that, from his position as a recent sheriff and as commander of military forces in Wiltshire in 1645, late that year Colonel Ludlowe promoted the candidature of his uncle for the seat at Hindon once held by their respective grandfather and father.19Ludlow, Mems. i. 132. The alternative was George Howe*, a relative newcomer to the area, who was being assessed as a royalist sympathiser and who was probably supported by Presbyterian activists suspicious of the colonel’s radicalism. According to the latter’s published account, the bailiff and burgesses chose Ludlowe I, only for the ‘rabble of the town’ later to select Howe.20Ludlow, Mems. i. 132 The indentures suggest that the reverse was true, that lesser men favoured Ludlowe I (explicitly ‘the elder’) – which would fit this political analysis – but the date (30 Dec.) survives only on the Howe document.21C219/43/3, nos. 5, 8. After some delay, the sheriff, Alexander Thistlethwayte*, made a double return.22CJ iv. 414a, 431b. The Memoirs claim that Howe pre-empted his rival by attending the chamber to claim the seat, but there is no evidence either way.23Ludlow, Mems. i. 133. Ludlowe was potentially just as capable of exploiting connections in the chamber or geographical proximity to slip in.

The issue was apparently still unresolved when Howe died in December 1647.24CJ v. 1a, 25b, 27b, 30b. Whether at this point Ludlowe was technically the Member by default is unclear. He is not visible in the Journal or accounts of the purge of December 1648 and its aftermath. In the meantime, he continued as a Wiltshire assessment commissioner and had been added to the commission of the peace by mid-January 1649.25A. and O.; C231/6, p. 131. He remained a justice of the peace during the commonwealth, but does not appear on later lists, although he was possibly an assessment commissioner in 1657.26C193/13/3, f. 69v; C193/13/4, f. 109; Stowe 577, f. 58; The Names of the Justices (1650), 61 (E.1238.4). He may have shared his nephew’s reservations about the protectorate, or at least have been affected by suspicions of the latter’s loyalty. He was not again elected to Parliament.

On the face of it, Ludlowe weathered the Restoration with surprising ease, given his notorious name. His will of 1666 reveals not only considerable prosperity but also some engagement with fashionable society, thanks to a lodging in the Strand, Westminster; the register of St Andrew, Holborn, where he was buried on 28 September that year, described him as residing in St Martin-in-the-Fields.27PROB11/322/363; St Andrew, Holborn, par. reg.; E115/246/109. Shortly before his death he foreclosed on a mortgage, acquired for £2,600 only in 1664, on the manor of Hurstbourne Tarrant, Hampshire, when Lord Charles Paulet, a son of the Roman Catholic marquess of Winchester, failed to pay his debt.28CSP Dom. 1668-9, p. 212; Hoare, Hist. Wilts. i (Mere), 15; VCH Wilts. iv. 320. In addition to £200 for his funeral and many bequests to his brothers’ descendants, Ludlowe left land at Ealing, Middlesex, and £150 a year to his widow, Katherine, plausibly the Katherine Clement married in 1657 to one of his name at St Paul’s, Covent Garden.29St Paul, Covent Garden, London, par.reg. She was sufficiently young for her remarriage within seven years of widowhood to be considered as a possibility in Ludlowe’s will, but he had no children. He vested his main estate in Wiltshire in his executors, nephews Nathaniel Ludlowe (brother of the regicide and living in London) and (another) Edmund Ludlowe (son of Benjamin and living in Ireland), for purposes to be declared in other documents, and retained the power to dispose of £3,000 before his death.30PROB11/322/363. No additional documents survive, perhaps – as indicated in claims made by the Paulets and in Edmund II’s memoirs – because they named the latter, his eldest nephew of full blood, as the chief heir, a disposal of assets compromised by the latter’s attainder.31CSP Dom. 1666-7, pp. 368, 491-2; 1668-9, p. 132; Bodl. MS Eng. hist. c. 487, p. 1176. Edmund son of Benjamin succeeded his aunt in the property at Ealing, while Nathaniel was granted Hurstbourne Tarrant in 1669, but by 1668 Kingston Deverill appears to have been in the hands of Sir James Thynne*.32CSP Dom. 1666-7, pp. 444, 517, 526, 535; 1668-9, pp. 212, 246; Longleat, Thynne pprs. Bk. 51, f. 19; Bk. 52, f. 9. Various family members prospered as lawyers or minor gentry, but none sat in Parliament.