My WILSON Family History and Genealogy:Information about Thomas Dudley
Thomas Dudley (b. 12 October 1576, d. 31 July 1653)
Notes for Thomas Dudley:Thomas Dudley, the only son of Capt. Roger Dudley and Susanna Thorne, was born in 1576 at Northampton, England. On March 14, 1590, when he was fourteen years old, his father was killed at the Battle of Ivery, leaving Thomas and his sister orphans, as their mother had died previously. He worked as chief steward of Theophilus Clinton, the Earl of Lincoln, where he developed Puritan beliefs.
Thomas inherited 500 pounds from his father and was raised as a page in the family of Lord Compton, Earl of Northampton. Afterwards, he became a clerk to his maternal kinsman, Judge Nichols, thus obtaining some knowledge of the law, which proved to be of great service to him in his later life. Also, while still in his minority, he was trained in Latin by a "Mrs. Purefoy", who was probably his maternal grandmother, Mary Purefoy. All in all, he gained a competent education and was able to understand any Latin author as well as most educated people of his time.
In 1596, at the age of twenty, Thomas received a Captain's commission in the army. According to Cotton Mather, "the young sparks about Northampton were none of them willing to enter into the service until a commission was given to our young Dudley to be their Captain, and thus presently there were four-score that listed under him." Thomas and his company of volunteers went to France and fought on the side of Henry IV, King of France, at the siege of Amiens in 1597.
On the conclusion of peace in 1597, Thomas returned to England, settled at Northampton and became acquainted with Dod, Hildersham and other Puritan leaders and himself became a Puritan. In 1603, he married Dorothy Yorke, daughter of Edmonde Yorke, yeoman, of Cotton End, Northamptonshire. She was described by Cotton Mather as "a gentlewoman both of good estate and good extraction." By her he had five children. During the period from about 1600 to 1630, Thomas was steward (manager of estates) to Theophilus, Earl of Lincoln, who had been deep in debt prior to Thomas' stewardship. After only a few years of management by Thomas, however, the Earl was out of debt and was prospering. Also, during this period, Thomas became acquainted with John Cotton, renowned minister of Boston, Lincolnshire (and later of Boston, MA). The Puritans were considered by many political leaders and by the Church of England to be a threat and were subjected to substantial persecution. During the 1620's, relations between the Church of England and the Puritans worsened. Continuing pressure led to a decision by a large group of Puritans to emigrate to New England.
In 1628 a group of Puritans, led by Dudley and John Winthrop persuaded Charles I to grant them an area of land between the Massachusetts Bay and Charles River in North America. That year the group sent John Endecott to begin a plantation in Salem.
The main party of 700 people left Southampton in April 1630. The party included Dudley, John Winthrop, William Pynchon, Simon Bradstreet and Anne Bradstreet. Before they left John Cotton gave a sermon where he emphasized the parallel between the Puritans and the God's chosen people, claiming it was God's will that they should inhabit all the world. During the 1630s over 20,000 people emigrated to Massachusetts.
John Winthrop was the first governor of Massachusetts Colony. He chose Boston as the the capital and the seat of the General Court and the legislature. Dudley was appointed his deputy and on four occasions (1634, 1640, 1645 and 1650) he served as governor.
Dudley and John Winthrop did not always agree about the way the colony should be ruled. Whereas Winthrop was tolerant and liberal, Dudley favoured the expulsion of any person he considered to be a heretic. It was Dudley who managed to get Anne Hutchinson and her followers removed from the colony. A crisis meeting was held in 1635 and these conflicts were resolved. Two years later Winthrop published a new policy on heresy. Thomas Dudley died in Roxbury, Massachusetts, on 31st July, 1653.
In 1629, Thomas Dudley was one of the signers of the agreement to form the Massachusetts Bay Company. On Oct. 20, 1629, in the city of London, he was chosen one of the five officers to come to America with the Royal Charter.
The Massachusetts Bay Company was essentially similar to any other trading company of the time, except that its members had managed to obtain possession of the company charter, or patent, and thus could take it with them to the New World. With possession of the patent that established their rights and privileges, they could control their own government and elect their own magistrates. The group elected John Winthrop governor and Thomas Dudley deputy governor in October 1629.
It is difficult to understand Thomas Dudley's decision to leave England for the unknown shores of North America. In England he had friends, position and prosperity. But he decided to leave all this behind. Apparently, the pressures of persecution were so great that he was virtually forced to leave England or give up his religious convictions.
In 1630, Thomas and his wife and children sailed to New England with the Winthrop Fleet, a group of eleven vessels carrying 700 passengers. The Dudley family was on the flagship, the Arbella. The Fleet left England in the Spring and arrived in Salem in June. Not approving of Salem as the capital, John Winthrop ordered the fleet south along the coast to Charlestown, ultimately settling at Newtown. Before leaving England, Winthrop had been elected governor and Thomas Dudley deputy-governor. Many of those who came with Winthrop separated and founded Roxbury, Lynn, Medford, Cambridge and Watertown. According to Thomas Dudley, about 200 of the emigrants died the first year in New England.
A somewhat violent disagreement between Dudley and Winthrop, the first of many owing to Dudley's touchy and over-bearing temper, occurred when Winthrop abandoned the chosen settlement and moved to Boston. Dudley subsequently moved to Ipswich but after a short time, in order to be nearer the seat of government, settled at Roxbury. He built on the west side of Smelt Brook, just across the watering place, at the foot of the hill where the road that runs up to the First Church joins the Town Street.
Although Thomas Dudley was 54 years of age when he landed in New England, he still had a long public career ahead of him. Throughout the rest of his life, he was almost constantly in public office. He was four times elected governor and thirteen times made deputy-governor. When not occupying either of these offices, he was usually to be found in the House as an Assistant. When the Standing Council with the idea of forming a body of members for life, Dudley was one of the three first chosen. When the New England Federation was formed in 1643, Dudley was one of the two commissioners chosen by Massachusetts to confer with those of the other colonies. There is hardly an event in the life of the colony during his own in which he did not act a part.
Thomas Dudley and Simon Bradstreet (both future governors) founded Cambridge in 1631. Thomas, however, lived for many years in Roxbury (now part of Boston). In 1636, he was one of twelve men appointed by the General Court to consider the matter of a college at Newtown (Cambridge) and was one to report favorably on the project. In 1650, as governor, Thomas signed the original charter of the new college, named Harvard College.
Thomas was a strict Puritan and clashed several times with other leaders of the colony. He was known to be very inflexible in his views. Cotton Mather wrote that if Thomas Dudley had been alive at the time of the witchcraft trouble, New England would never have been disgraced by the bloodshed of innocent persons. He was one of the principal founders of the First Church at Boston and in the church now standing at Berkley and Marlborough streets is a tablet with the following inscription:
THOMAS DUDLEY. FOR SEVENTEEN YEARS GOVERNOR OR DEPUTY GOVERNOR OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY. AS GOVERNOR HE SIGNED THE CHARTER OF HARVARD COLLEGE. BORN IN ENGLAND 1576. DIED IN ROXBURY 1653. A MAN OF APPROVED WISDOM AND OF MUCH GOOD SERVICE TO THE STATE.
Thomas was evidently as strong in body as he was unyielding in temper and unbreakable in will. Dorothy Dudley died in 1643 and Thomas remarried to Catherine Dighton. By her he had three children, the most noted being Joseph Dudley (1647) the future royal governor of Massachusetts, who was born when the old man was 70 years of age.
Dudley was an able man with marked executive and business ability. His integrity was unimpeachable. His eye, though somewhat religiously jaundiced, was single to the public interest as he saw it. He was something of a scholar and wrote poetry, read in his day, but unreadable in ours. In him, New England Puritanism took on some of its harshest and least pleasant aspects. He often won approval, but never affection. He was positive, dogmatic, austere, prejudiced, unlovable. He dominated by sheer strength of will as a leader in his community. Like many of the others, he was no friend to popular government and a strong believer in autocracy. Opposed to the clergy in one respect, he believed that the state should control even the church and enforce conformity as the superior, and not the handmaid, of the ecclesiastical organization.
Thomas was a thrifty man, who became one of the largest landowners in Roxbury, He was a "trading, money-getting man" and was said to be somewhat hard and "prone to usury." When he died, his property was valued at £1,560 and included bandoleers, corselets, some Latin books, some on law, some that indicate a taste for literature, and many on the doctrines of religion.
On July 31, 1653, Thomas Dudley died at the age of 77 at Roxbury, Massachusetts. There was a great funeral, with the most distinguished citizens as pall bearers. the clergy were present in large numbers. Military units were present with muffled drums and reversed arms. He was buried at Roxbury, near his home, where his tomb may be seen on the highest point of land. His epitaph was written by Rev. Ezekiel Rogers and reads as follows:
In books a Prodigal they say;
A table talker rich in sense;
And witty without wits pretense;
An able champion in debate;
Whose words lacked number but not weight;
Both Catholic and Christian too;
A soldier timely, tried and true;
Condemned to share the common doom;
Reposes here in Dudley's tomb;
There has been much debate among historians and some genealogists concerning descent of the Massachusetts Dudleys from the famous Barons Dudley of England. Suffice it to say that Rev. Samuel Dudley, oldest son of Thomas, claimed such descent during his lifetime and apparently was not challenged. Furthermore, Thomas Dudley was accustomed to using the arms (seal) of the Barons Dudley to seal legal documents bearing his signature. In fact his will, written with his own hand, was sealed with the Dudley arms, indicating that he was descended from the Sutton-Dudleys of Dudley Castle. It was a serious offense under English law to use arms under false pretenses.
HIS RELATIONSHIP TO DUDLEYTOWN: Ed and Lorraine Warren say that Gov Dudley was an Uncle to the Dudleytown brothers (see "Ghost Hunters") and that he was "hacked to death in the vicinity of Dudleytown, and the murderer was never caught." As we can see, the Warrens never did any research into their claims. Gov Dudley died 84 years BEFORE the first Dudleytown brother set foot there, and that he died of natural causes in Roxbury.
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Bibliography:
Koues, George Ellsworth STATEMENT OF RESEARCHES ON THE PARENTAGE OF GOVERNOR THOMAS DUDLEY, pub. by Governor Thomas Dudley Family Association (1912)
Weis, Frederick Lewis The Ancestry of Governor Thomas Dudley, pub. by author (1962)
Ellis, Charles M. History of Roxbury Town, pub. by Samuel G. Drake
Adlard, George The Sutton-Dudleys of England and the Dudleys of Mass. (1862)
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Who was this Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley? Was his family of some importance in the "mother country" of England? Who or what became of his progeny in this new country of America? The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), the eminent society of genealogy, has published, via one of its researchers, Mr. Gary Boyd Roberts, an article that concerns itself with the answers to our enquiries. This by-line, entitled the "Royal Descents, Notable Kin, and Printed Sources #63 & Notable Descendants of Governor Thomas Dudley," shall form the backbone of this story.
In this article, Thomas Dudley's patrilineal line shows him to be the son of Captain Roger Dudley, who was the grandson of John Dudley, 3rd Baron Dudley & Cecily Grey, who was the daughter of Thomas Grey, the 1st Marquees of Dorset, and a descendant of the Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of Edward IV, King of England, mother-in-law of Henry VII, and grandmother of Henry VIII [English Royal House of Tudor]. Additionally, this English Queen could trace her line through a sister of the great-grandfather of Juana Henriquez, the wife of Juan (John) II, King of Aragon, and mother of Ferdinand V of Aragon. This monarch became the husband of Queen Isabella of Castile, thereby uniting those two kingdoms, into a united Spain. In addition, these two royals became the sponsors for Christopher Columbus, who "discovered" what we now call the
American continent.
On the matrilineal side, it has been established that Thomas Dudley, though his mother Susanna Thorne, was descended from King John of England, who was forced by the barons to grant, on 1215 15 June at Runnymeade, the Magna Charta ("Great Charter") which guaranteed civil and political rights to the English people, through his illegitimate son: Reginald Fitz Roy.
While we have identified the royal past of Billerica's "founder," what be-came of the progeny of this man? Did these persons continue with the same ideal that drove Thomas Dudley to lay claim to our township?
In this same article, Mr. Gary Boyd Roberts listed the following Americans, who are Thomas Dudley's descendants:
** John Brown: (1800-1859) - the abolitionist.
** Benjamin Franklin Wade: (1800-1878) - U.S. Senator and radical Republican leader, during the Civil War and in the era of Southern Reconstruction.
** Schuyler Colfax, Jr.: (1823-1885) - Speaker of the House of Representatives & U.S. Vice-President under President U.S. Grant.
** Emily Dow Patridge: one of Brigham Young's wives, who he left Issue, including a section of the Marriott Hotel Clan.
** John Henry Hobart: (1775-1830) - Episcopal Bishop of New York; rector of Trinity Church.
** Alexandra Temple Emmett: 2nd wife of Arthur M. Schlesinger - historian.
** Clark McAdams Clifford: (1906-1998) - presidential advisor; U.S. Secretary of Defense.
** William P. Bundy: (1917-2000) - editor of Foreign Affairs.
** McGeorge Bundy: (1919-1996) - presidential advisor; President of the Ford Foundation.
** Robert Emmett Sherwood: (1896-1955) - playwright, editor and critic.
** Henry Lee Higginson: (1834-1919) - founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and; Harvard benefactor.
** Mary Woodbridge Goddard: 1st wife of Louis Comfort Tiffany - art patron, glassmaker and designer of the "Tiffany lamp."
** Frank Nelson Doubleday: (1862-1934) - publisher and founder of Doubleday and Company.
** Nelson Doubleday: (1889-1949) - son of Frank Nelson Doubleday; CEO of Doubleday and Company.
** Elliot Lee Richardson: (1920-1999) - U.S. Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare; U.S. Secretary of Defense; U.S. Secretary of Commerce; U.S. Attorney General and diplomat.
** Lowell Palmer Weicker, Jr.: (1931- present) - U.S. Senator (1971-1989) and Governor of Connecticut.
As noted, many items of American History have been directly affected by those persons, who are in the Dudley family line. Today, we may enquire as to how this effects our fellow townsmen who can not claim any type of lineage with Thomas Dudley. Would not the answer to this enquiry be fairly simple? Are we not able to lay claim to the concept of being the spiritual "sons of Columbia [Christopher Columbus]?" Even if our parentage is derived from the sachems of the New England Indians, to the daughters of the potato famine, from the children of the Civil War's 29th Massachusetts "Negro" Division, to those "na Geana Fiadhaine [The Wild Geese]" who fled persecution from the oppressor, accepting exile into this foreign land, are we not allowed to emphatically state that the residents of the Town of Billerica are "noble," as we continue to re-establish a heritage of pride for our own progeny?
Who shall continue to contribute, in the 21st Century, to that community known as Billerica?
Submitted By Philip Newfell
More About Thomas Dudley and Dorothy Yorke:
Marriage: 25 April 1603, Hardingstone, Northamptonshire, England.
Children of Thomas Dudley and Dorothy Yorke are:
- +Ann Dudley, b. 1612, North Hampton, England, d. 16 September 1672, Andover, Massachusetts.