Chapter 5 - Ludlow’s Protestant Vision

Summary

Chapter 5 focuses on Edmund Ludlow as the author of his exile memoir ‘A Voyce from the Watch Tower’ and the facilitator and editor of a French translation of the infamous Speeches and Prayers of Some of the Late King’s Judges (1660) as a martyrology of his fellow regicides. The two projects are closely related, as the French pamphlet, which appeared in 1663 under the title Les juges jugez, se justifiants, and the process of its publication are documented in the ‘Voyce’. One may in fact have inspired the writing of the other. Les juges is the work of a religious and political activist attempting to make the fate of his executed brothers known across Protestant Europe. The ‘Voyce’ is the manuscript of an autobiography or memoir which was published after its author’s death in a carefully edited version that was to serve a political purpose of its own. Yet both works are document to Ludlow’s rejection of divine-right monarchy, his strong belief in the justice of the republican cause as the cause of God, his deeply held religious conviction and the providential role he assigned to his fellow republicans in preparing the way for the Lord.