The Protectorate
Though disapproving of Cromwell's action in dissolving the Rump Parliament in April 1653, Ludlow maintained his employment. However, when Cromwell was declared Lord Protector after the failure of Barebone's Parliament he declined to acknowledge his authority.
According to his Memoirs he believed that Cromwell "had not appeared that he ever approved on any persons farther than he might make them subservient to his own ambitious designs; ...and that the generality of the people that had engaged with us having acted upon no higher principles than those of civil liberty, and that they might be governed by their own consent, it could not be just to treat them in another manner upon any pretenses whatsoever."
On returning to England in October 1655 he was arrested, and on refusing to submit to the government was allowed to retire to Essex. When examined by Cromwell, he was asked: "Pray then,' said he, 'what is it that you would have? May not every man be as good as he will? What can you desire more than you have? It were easy,' said I, 'to tell what we would have.' 'What is that, I pray? said he. 'That which we fought for," said I, 'that the nation might be governed by its own consent."
After Oliver Cromwell's death Ludlow was returned for Hindon in Richard's parliament of 1659, but opposed the continuance of the protectorate. He sat in the restored Rump, and was a member of its Council of State and of the Committee of Safety after its second expulsion, and a commissioner for the nomination of officers in the army.
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