His friends were disgusted by his caution, and Colonel Blood, who was sent over to persuade Ludlow to head a rising in England, described him as very unable for such an employment (A modest Vindication of Oliver Cromwell from the Accusations of Lieutenant-general Ludlow, 4to, 1698, p. 2).
The history of the later part of Ludlow's exile is very obscure. His memoirs end abruptly in 1672, and say little about himself after 1667. His letters between 1667 and 1670 show that he watched with great keenness the course of events in England. For more security he adopted his mother's name, and signed the letters ‘Edmund Phillips’ (Stern, p. xv). His wife had joined him about 1663, and remained with him for the rest of his exile. One by one he lost the companionship of his fellow-regicides. Cawley died in 1666, Nicholas Love in 1682, and Andrew Broughton in 1687. In April 1684 some of the exiled whigs endeavoured to persuade Ludlow to head a rising in the west of England. Their agent found him ‘no ways disposed to the thing, saying he had done his work, he thought, in the world, and was resolved to leave it to others’ (Confession of Nathaniel Wade, Harl. MS. 6845, f. 269). The revolution seemed to open to him the prospect of a return to England. The preface to the first edition of his ‘Memoirs’ states that he was sent for as a fit person to be employed in the reconquest of Ireland (p. vii). On 25 July 1689 he took a solemn farewell of the magistrates of Vevay, telling them that the Lord had called him home to strengthen the hands of the English Gideon (Archæologia, xxxv. 114). He went to London, where his house became the rendezvous of the survivors of the republican party (A Caveat against the Whigs, ed. 1714, iii. 47). On 6 Nov. 1689 Sir Joseph Tredenham called the attention of the House of Commons to his presence in England, and they resolved to ask the king ‘to issue out a proclamation for the apprehending Colonel Ludlow, who stands attainted of high treason by act of parliament for the murder of King Charles I.’ An address to this purpose was presented to the king by Sir Edward Seymour on 7 Nov. William answered that the desire of the commons was reasonable and just, and published a proclamation offering 200l. reward for Ludlow's arrest (Grey, Debates, ix. 397; Seward, Anecdotes, ed. 1798, ii. 177). Ludlow escaped to Holland, according to the tories with the connivance of the king, and returned in safety to Switzerland. His death is mentioned in Luttrell's ‘Diary’ (ii. 623) under 26 Nov. 1692.
He was buried in St. Martin's Church, Vevay, and the monument erected there by his widow in 1693 states that he died in the seventy-third year of his age. The epitaph is printed in Addison's ‘Travels’ (ed. 1745, p. 264) and in the preface to the 1751 edition of Ludlow's ‘Memoirs.’ Over the door of the house in which Ludlow lived at Vevay he placed a board, with the inscription
Omne solum forti patria
quia patris.
‘The first part,’ says Addison, ‘is a piece of verse in Ovid, as the last is a cant of his own.’ This board is now in the possession of Lord-justice Lopes. The authorities of Vevay set up during the present century an inscription, marking the site of the house in which Ludlow resided. But according to M. Albert du Montet of Vevay (quoted by Sir Richard Burton), the inscription is wrongly placed, and should be on the house now No. 49 Rue du Lac (Academy, January 1889).
Ludlow left no issue. He married, about 1649, Elizabeth, daughter of William Thomas of Wenvoe, Glamorganshire, by Jane, daughter of Sir John Stradling of St. Donats. After Ludlow's death his widow married, in 1694, Sir John Thomas, bart., and died 8 Feb. 1701–2, aged 72 (G. T. Clark's Genealogies of Morgan and Glamorgan, 1886, p. 558; Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. p. 385).
The best portrait of Ludlow is that prefixed to the ‘Memoirs.’ According to a note by Thomas Holles in the copy of the 1751 edition which he gave to the public library at Bern, it is ‘a bad print from a very good drawing on vellum by R. White, taken from the life when the general was in England in the reign of King William’ (Stern, p. xi). The full-length equestrian portrait by P. Stent is Hollar's portrait of the Earl of Essex with alterations, and the etching by Cipriani is a fancy portrait.
Ludlow's ‘Memoirs,’ the composition of his exile, were first printed in 1698–9, in three vols. 8vo, nominally at Vevay. Editions in one vol. fol. and 4to were published at London in 1751 and 1771, and an edition in three vols. 12mo at Edinburgh in 1751. The editor of the first edition took the liberty of suppressing all passages which reflected on the character of the Earl of Shaftesbury. Copies of these passages were found among Locke's papers, and are printed in Christie's ‘Life of Shaftesbury’ (vol. i. pp. lvi–lxii). It is said that the original memoirs were entrusted to Slingsby Bethel [q. v.], and given by him to an unnamed whig to be published. A tradition current about the middle of the eighteenth century states that they were
