Regicide

The back end of a farmyard is not the most attractive place, but this is a site of historical interest. We get visitors who come asking to see this site, and we direct them to the pile of rubble leaning against the barn wall.

This blip is the prequel to my blip on 7th April when I showed you the Victorian plans for the farmhouse. I said that the current house replaces an older house that burned down. The older, Jacobean, house, called South Lodge, was on the site where this barn is now. Only the rubble remains after the best stone was reused in the older barns.

It was the home of General Edmund Ludlow (c.1617-1692), an English parliamentarian, best known for his involvement in the execution of Charles I, and for his Memoirs, which have become a major source for historians.

After service in the English Civil Wars, Ludlow was elected a Member of the Long Parliament. He opposed negotiations with Charles I, and was one of the judges at the king's trial. Fatefully, he signed the warrant for Charles' execution.

In 1649, he was elected a member of the new Council of State, then made second-in-command of Parliament's forces in Ireland, before breaking with Oliver Cromwell over the establishment of the Protectorate. He thought that Cromwell had become a dictator instead of ruling in the interests of the people.

After Cromwell's death and the Restoration of the monarchy, parliament ruled that the judges of Charles I during his trial should be arrested. Ludlow's life was not protected under the Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion Act, and he fled into exile in Switzerland, where he spent much of the rest of his life.

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Ludlow came back to England. However, he was remembered only as a regicide, and Sir Edward Seymour (whose family had taken control of Ludlow's land and assets) asked William III to issue a proclamation for his arrest. Ludlow escaped again, and returned to Vevey in Switzerland, where he died in 1692.

His land was still owned by the Seymours (by now Dukes of Somerset) until the 1950s when two dukes died in quick succession and some land had to be sold to pay the death duties.