restore a number of passages suppressed by Ludlow's editor, and the first containing critical and explanatory notes, and adding the letters of Ludlow.'

6

This is perhaps a somewhat narrow view to take of the new edition. We should be the last, indeed, to undervalue the importance of restoring suppressed passages in a memoir of this character, or of adding critical and explanatory notes by a master hand; for, after all, accuracy is the first of historical virtues, and there can be no doubt that it is one of the chief merits of the modern school of historians that it recognises the value, and indeed the necessity, of accuracy of details. But the popular value of this edition, if we may use the term, is that it places Ludlow's Memoirs' before the reader and student of the day in a form which makes them capable of easy perusal, so that there can be gathered from them the general feeling of the time, and the real opinions of the writer, representative, as we have said, of a remarkable section of the people. It may be very well to know that the story of Cromwell's drive in Hyde Park is given also by Thurloe and Vaughan, and to be reminded that the ingenious Marvell, with a courtier's aptitude, turned it to poetic account. But, after all, it is much more to the point to have the story in readable form at our elbow, and to be able from it to understand the savage anger with which the Irreconcileables, in 1655, regarded Cromwell's position, and to appreciate his masterful nature, even in his pleasures. The anecdote is short, and it is not amiss to recall it :

In the meantime,' says Ludlow, Cromwell having assumed the whole power of the nation to himself, and sent ambassadors and agents to foreign states, was courted again by them, and presented with the rarities of several countries; amongst the rest, the Duke of Holstein made him a present of a set of gray Friezland coach-horses, with which taking the air in the Park, attended only with his secretary Thurlow, and guard of Janizaries, he would needs take the place of the coachman, not doubting but the three pair of horses he was about to drive would prove as tame as the three nations which were ridden by him; and therefore not contented with their ordinary pace he lashed them very furiously. But they, unaccustomed to such a rough driver, ran away in a rage and stop'd not till they had thrown him out of the box, with which fall his pistol fired in his pocket, tho without any hurt to himself; by which he might have been instructed how dangerous it was to intermeddle with those things wherein he had no experience.' (Vol. i. p. 397.)

A story such as this is not a mere entertaining curiosity of history; it is a revelation of character and of opinion,

VOL. CLXXXI. NO. CCCLXXI,

M

Cromwell getting up on the box to drive three pairs of horses shows us the overflowing energy of the man.

'So restless Cromwell could not cease

In the inglorious arts of peace,

But through adventurous war
Urged his active star.'

The restless Cromwell' of Marvell's Horatian ode is no mere poetic figure when we see the Protector driving his own coach. In the angry phrase of Ludlow, too, not doubting but the three pairs of horses he was about to 'drive would prove as tame as the three nations driven by 'him,' we see expressed at once the vexation and the impotence of men who, while they disliked the Protector's policy, were powerless to prevent it, and were full of contempt for the people who could submit to his rule. But to return to these Memoirs. We have spoken of the several editions which have been published. The exact date at which they were written will probably never be known, nor is it, after all, particularly important that it should be. There is sufficient evidence to fix the date approximately. The opening 'sentence shows that he began to write after the Restoration, and in all probability some time after the Restoration; and, later on, the editor observes, The Memoirs end abruptly with the year 1672, and the latter period has all the air of a contemporary record. . . . From these 'different indications it may be inferred, in the absence of 'better evidence, that the Memoirs were probably written 'between 1663 and 1673.' When we bear this fact in mind, it is not surprising that, as far as details are concerned, Ludlow's narrative of the Civil War was necessarily inaccurate; it was the mere recollection of past events noted down in after years when far from friends and home. And it must be confessed that, however little we may agree with Ludlow's very extreme opinions, no reader of these Memoirs will ever fail to feel sympathy for a man who was obliged to live in exile for a long period of his life. For, if ever there was an honest man, and a patriot at heart, it was Ludlow. Born in 1617, at Maiden Bradley, the son of Sir Henry Ludlow, head of an old Wiltshire family, educated at Oxford, and then a member of the Inner Temple, Ludlow was one of those men who might be expected to be adherents of the king. His adhesion to the popular cause, to a certain extent at first, through the vigorous partisanship of his father, shows how deeply society was moved

against the pretensions of the king. In the early part of the Civil War Ludlow's gallant defence of Wardour Castle brought him prominently into notice; but he never achieved any position as a soldier, nor, indeed, after he became a member of parliament, did he show any of the qualities of a debater or a statesman. His public reputation was gained by his social position, his obvious honesty of purpose, and his obstinate adherence to his own narrow views. He was one of the judges of the king; in 1651, he went to Ireland as second in command, and his narrative of the campaigns in that country describes with full reality, 'far better than any formally accurate record of sieges and military operations,' the character of the war, and the temper in which it was prosecuted.

But though Ludlow did his work in Ireland in a businesslike manner, and when he had to deal with the Irish in a fair spirit, his duties did not require more than the most ordinary military knowledge, and he never showed any signs of statesmanlike gift. This narrative is absolutely bare of any suggestion or observation showing the least gleam of appreciation of the problems which lay before any English government in Ireland. It is the work, not so much of a soldier, or even of a politician, as of a chief constable, of an intelligent police officer set to deal with a criminal class without prejudice and without feeling. Thus, when the Irish were practically overcome, in 1652, he had occasion to visit the garrison of Dundalk, and on his return to Meath he

'found a party of the enemy retired within a hollow rock, which was discovered by one of ours, who saw five or six of them standing before a narrow passage at the mouth of the cave. The rock was so thick that we thought it impossible to dig it down upon them, and therefore resolved to try to reduce them by smoak. After some of our men had spent most part of the day in endeavouring to smother those within by fire placed at the mouth of the cave, they withdrew the fire and the next morning supposing the Irish to be made uncapable of resistance by the smoak, some of them with a candle before them crawled in to the rock. One of the enemy who lay in the middle of the entrance fired his pistol, and shot the first of our men into the head, by whose loss we found that the smoak had not taken the designed effect. But seeing no other way to reduce them, I caused the trial to be repeated, and upon examination found that tho a great smoak went into the cavity of the rock, yet it came out again at other crevices; upon which I ordered those places to be closely stopped and another smoak made. About an hour and a half after this, one of them was heard to groan very strongly, and afterwards more weakly, whereby we presumed that the work was done; yet the fire was continued till about midnight,

and then taken away, that the place might be cool enough for ours to enter next morning. At which time some went in with back, breast and head-piece to prevent such another accident as fell out at their first attempt; but they had not gone above six yards before they found the man that had been heard to groan, who was the same that had killed one of our men with his pistol, and who resolving not to quit his post, had been upon stopping the holes of the rock choaked by the smoak. Our soldiers put a rope about his neck, and drew him out. The passage being cleared, they entred, and having put about fifteen to the sword, brought four or five out alive, with the priest's robes, a crucifix, chalice, and other furniture of that kind. Those within preserved themselves by laying their heads close to a water that ran through the rock. We found two rooms in the place, one of which was large enough to turn a pike; and having filled the mouth of it with large stones, we quitted it, and marched to Castle Blany, where I left a party of foot, and some horse, as I had done before at Carrick and Newry, whereby that part of the county of Monaghan was pretty well secured.' (Vol. i. p. 327.)

Ludlow obviously made no attempt to induce these unfortunate Irish to surrender; he treated them as a gardener would a nest of wasps: he smoked them into a stupor and killed them, regarding the incident as trivial and ordinary. This occurrence vividly illustrates the temper in which the pacification of Ireland was carried on, for the excesses of Drogheda and Wexford were repeated in unremembered hamlets.

After the death of Ireton, in November 1657, Ludlow became the acting commander-in-chief in Ireland until the arrival of Fleetwood in the following October. In 1655 he was suspended from his command for regarding the expulsion of the Long Parliament as a fatal blow to the freedom of the nation. He had become as bitterly opposed to what he considered as Cromwell's personal ambition as he had previously been to the pretensions of Charles.

The narrowness of Ludlow's mental views, and his utter incapacity to recognise the qualities of a statesman, are vividly exemplified in this antagonism to Cromwell. Having once made up his mind that Cromwell was actuated by a personal ambition, he never seems to have endeavoured to consider if this hastily formed opinion was right; he regarded every act of Cromwell as a move for his aggrandisement, and, what is more astonishing, he does not seem always to have a correct knowledge of Cromwell's public conduct. This latter error may possibly be merely the result of a lapse of memory, and Ludlow may, writing a good many years after the events he described in some parts of his

Thus he

Memoirs, have been unintentionally incorrect. suddenly breaks off from his narrative of events in Ireland in 1653, a narrative which is the more valuable since no one had a better knowledge than he who was on the spot, to enlarge on Cromwell and his ambition.

cause.

'General Cromwell had long been suspected by wise and good men ; but he had taken such care to form and mould the army to his humour and interests, that he had filled all places either with his own creatures, or with such as hoped to share with him in the sovreignty, and removed those who foreseeing his design, had either the courage or honesty to oppose him in it. His pernicious intentions did not discover themselves openly till after the battel at Worcester, which in one of his letters to the Parliament he called The Crowning Victory. At the same time when he dismissed the militia, who had most readily offered themselves to serve the Commonwealth against the Scots, he did it with anger and contempt, which was all the acknowledgement they could obtain from him for their service and affection to the publick In a word so much was he elevated with that success, that Mr. Hugh Peters, as he since told me, took so much notice of it, as to say in confidence to a friend upon the road in his return from Worcester, that Cromwell would make himself king. He now began to despise divers members of the house whom he had formerly courted, and grew most familiar with those whom he used to show most aversion to; endeavouring to oblige the royal party, by procuring for them more favourable conditions than consisted with the justice of the Parliament to grant, under colour of quieting the spirits of many people and keeping them from engaging in new disturbances to rescue themselves out of those fears, which many who had acted for the king yet lay under; tho at the same time he designed nothing, as by the success was most manifest, but to advance himself by all manner of means, and to betray the great trust which the Parliament and good people of England had reposed in him. To this end he pressed the Act of Oblivion with so much importunity, that tho some members earnestly opposed its bearing date till after some months, as well in justice to those of that party who had already fined for their delinquency, that others as guilty as themselves might be upon an equal foot with them, as that the state might by that means be supplied with money, which they wanted and that such who had been plundered by the enemy might receive some satisfaction from those who had ruined them, yet nothing could prevail upon the General; and so the Act was passed, the Parliament being unwilling to deny him any thing for which there was the least colour of reason.' (Vol. i. p. 344.)

It was a right step on the part of a statesman, since Charles was dead and the monarchy overthrown, to endeavour to put an end to the animosity between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, and to obtain the co-operation of all classes in establishing some new form of government. An act of oblivion was a necessary step to this end, and yet Ludlow regarded