Person Page - 341

       Simon/1 Bradstreet was born in Mar 1602/3 at Horbling, Lincolnshire.¹ He married, before April 1630 in England, Anne/2 Dudley, daughter of Thomas Dudley, a future governor of Massachusetts Bay, and his 2d wife Dorothy Yorke, and later known as "The Poetess."^2,3 Simon and Mrs. Anne Bradstreet sailed as husband and wife with her family to New England in 1630 aboard the Winthrop Fleet.³ They initially settled at Newtown (later Cambridge) in July.³
     Simon Bradstreet, as a Bay Colony Assistant, was among those who found accused witch Margaret Jones of Charlestown guilty, for which she was hung 15 Jun 1648, the colony's first convicted witch.⁴ The Bradstreet household now lived at Andover, where his wife Anne died 16 Sep 1672.⁵ Simon married (2) Anne (–?–), widow of Capt. Joseph Gardner of Salem.¹
     Simon Bradstreet was governor of the Bay Colony from May 1679 to May 1692, with the exception of the years 1687-88, during which home rule was suspended under the authority of Sir Edmund Andros.⁶ He died at Salem 27 Mar 1697, aged about 94, and rests with his wife in The Burying Point.^7,1
     Mass.gov, the "Official Website of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts," offers the following biography of Simon Bradstreet:
     "Simon Bradstreet was the final Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which by 1686 had lost its charter. For over three generations the Massachusetts Bay Colony had inched increasingly further from English rule. Governors were frequently called to defend the Colony's charter to operate as a relatively independent company.
     "Bradstreet arrived in Boston with John Winthrop aboard the Arabella and over the next fifty years he served as an Assistant of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (a position comparable to today's Governor's Council), while representing Massachusetts in the New England Confederation for 33 years. Finally in 1679, he was elected Governor.
     "As English calls to revoke Massachusetts' charter grew, Governor Bradstreet took a conciliatory approach to England. Eventually all of New England's charters were revoked and together they were made in to the short-lived Dominion of New England. Bradstreet rejected offers to join the new government, which was maintained by Joseph Dudley until the arrival of the reviled Royal Governor, Sir Edmund Andros.
     "England's 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688 disrupted Andros' rule, who was sent back to England in chains. The eighty-four year old Bradstreet found himself ruling again until the arrival of Massachusetts first Royal Governor, Sir William Phips in 1692."⁸

       Anne/2 Dudley was born in 1612 in Northamptonshire, England, where her father was estate steward of the Earl of Lincoln.¹ She married Simon/1 Bradstreet.^2,3 Simon and Mrs. Anne Bradstreet sailed as husband and wife with her family to New England in 1630 aboard the Winthrop Fleet.³ They initially settled at Newtown (later Cambridge) in July.³ She died 16 Sep 1672 at Andover, MA.⁴ Known as "The Poetess" for her published writings, a great rarity for a woman of the period, she is buried with her husband at the Burying Point, Salem.⁵ Simon Bradstreet died at Salem 27 Mar 1697.^5,6
     For a biographical essay see Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony, ch. 11. Her writings can be found in Miller and Johnson, eds., The Puritans: A Sourcebook of their Writings (Dover, 2001).⁷ For Simon Bradstreet's English royal ancestry, see Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2004).⁸