Person Page - 395

       Gov. Thomas/1 Dudley was born in 1576 at Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire.² He married (1), 1603, Dorothy Yorke, who died in 1643.^3,2 They sailed in 1630 from Yarmouth, on the Isle of Wight, to New England in the Winthrop Fleet, probably with John Winthrop aboard the Arabella, and settled in Cambridge upon their arrival in July.³
     He was soon elected the first Deputy Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Governor in his own right in 1634, a position which he held often between 1634–1655.⁴ As the father of Rev. Samuel Dudley, "his only son by his first wife," who married Mary Winthrop, Thomas Dudley was both ruling partner with, and brother-in-law to, Gov. John/1 Winthrop. Shattuck relates:
     Additional grants of land were occasionally made, adjoining Concord, after the first purchase. On the 2d of May, 1638, Governor Winthrop had 1,200 and Thomas Dudley 1,000 acres granted them below Concord. When they came up to view it, going down the river about four miles, they made choice of a place for one thousand acres for each of them. They offered each other the first choice, but because the deputy's was first granted, and himself had store of land already, the governor yielded him the choice. So, at the place where the deputy's land was to begin, there were two great stones, which they called the Two Brothers, in remembrance that they were brothers by their children's marriage, and did so brotherly agree, and for that a little creek near those stones was to part their lands.⁵
     Thomas Dudley lived many years at Roxbury, where his 1st wife Dorothy was buried 27 Dec 1643.⁶ There he married (2), 14 Apr 1644, Katherine Deighton, widow of ____ Hagburne.^7,8 As a Bay Colony Assistant (equivalent to a Governor's Councillor), Thomas Dudley 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.⁹
     Thomas Dudley presumably rests in the "Dudley family tomb for early Colonial governors" described by The Boston Globe as part of Roxbury's Eliot Burying Ground, at Washington and Eustis Streets.¹⁰ He was buried 31 Jul 1653.¹¹ For his English royal ancestry, see Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2004).⁸
     Mass.gov, the "Official Website of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts," offers the following biography of Thomas Dudley:
     "In 1629, Thomas Dudley was one of the original five officers of the Massachusetts Bay Corporation who traveled to America with the Winthrop fleet. Though he was 54 years old when he arrived in Massachusetts, Dudley would be elected Governor four times and served 13 terms as Deputy Governor.
     "Mr. Dudley had been a Captain in the English Army and is remembered as strong-willed and intelligent. He disagreed with John Winthrop's idea to base Massachusetts' government in Boston and settled in Ipswich, later moving to Roxbury to be closer to the Colony's government.
     "He and future Governor Simon Bradstreet were co-founders of Cambridge. In 1650, as Governor, Dudley signed the charter creating Harvard as Massachusetts' first college. The University still operates under this charter. Dudley was an overseer of Harvard College, and Dudley House memorializes Governor Dudley's leadership at the College and the early Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1702, Dudley's son, Joseph Dudley became Governor of Colonial Massachusetts."¹²

       Gov. John/1 Winthrop was born in England in 1587.¹ He came to New England in 1630 with his daughter Mary in the Arbella, flagship of the fleet of Puritan emigrants known today as the Winthrop Fleet. He was elected the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and held the office from 1630-34, 1637-40, 1642-44, and 1646-1649.¹
     His daughter Mary having married Rev. Samuel/2 Dudley, daughter of Thomas/1 Dudley, John Winthrop was both ruling partner with, and brother-in-law to, Gov. Thomas/1 Dudley. Shattuck relates:
     Additional grants of land were occasionally made, adjoining Concord, after the first purchase. On the 2d of May, 1638, Governor Winthrop had 1,200 and Thomas Dudley 1,000 acres granted them below Concord. When they came up to view it, going down the river about four miles, they made choice of a place for one thousand acres for each of them. They offered each other the first choice, but because the deputy's was first granted, and himself had store of land already, the governor yielded him the choice. So, at the place where the deputy's land was to begin, there were two great stones, which they called the Two Brothers, in remembrance that they were brothers by their children's marriage, and did so brotherly agree, and for that a little creek near those stones was to part their lands.²
     John Winthrop, then Bay Colony governor, 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.³ He died in 1649.¹ Buried in King's Chapel, Boston.^4,5
     Mass.gov, the "Official Website of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts," offers the following biography of John Winthrop:
     "John Winthrop was the young Massachusetts Colony's most prominent leader, serving as Governor for fifteen of its first twenty years. In his famous 'City on a Hill' speech, Winthrop articulated the Puritan hope that their community would be an example to the world. For Puritans did not merely seek to escape repression of their faith, they aspired to create a society based on that faith as a model to redeem their homeland.
     "In March of 1630, the Winthrop fleet of eleven vessels with more than 1,000 passengers onboard set off for Massachusetts. Unlike the Pilgrims who suffered through their passage and ended up 200 miles too far north during December, Winthrop and the Puritan settlers had a speedy passage, arriving in the warm weather of June and July at Salem where Governor John Endecott welcomed them.
     "Winthrop led the Puritans to Charlestown and eventually to the Shawmut Peninsula, because of its fresh water springs. An old Cambridge classmate of Winthrop's, the Reverend William Blackstone, who had been part of an earlier failed expedition, inhabited Shawmut. He invited the Massachusetts Bay Colony to join him on the Shawmut Peninsula. Settler Thomas Dudley, who would succeed Winthrop as the Colony's Governor, suggested the settlers name the new settlement 'Boston.' Dudley, as well as many of the settlers hailed from Boston in Lincolnshire, England. The name of their hometown recalled their desire to make a version of English society based on the principles of their faith.
     "In contemporary accounts Winthrop is often only recalled as the prosecutor of Anne Hutchinson. Winthrop's intolerant and even misogynistic nature was common among the zealous Puritan founders of Massachusetts. It often escapes contemporary readers that Winthrop was an able Governor in his time. He used the legal training he obtained as a young man studying law at the Inns of Court in London to effectively defend the Colony's charter in England. He was respected both by colonists in Massachusetts, as well as by the leaders of Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven who joined with Massachusetts in confederation and elected Winthrop their first chief executive."¹