Thomas Dudley - Early Years

Early Years

Thomas Dudley was born in Yardley Hastings, a village near Northampton, England, on 12 October 1576, to Roger and Susanna (Thorne) Dudley. His father, a captain in the English army, was apparently killed in battle. It was for some time believed he was killed in the 1590 Battle of Ivry, but this is unlikely because Susanna Dudley was later found to be widowed by 1588. The 1586 Siege of Zutphen has also been suggested as the occasion of Roger Dudley's death. The family has long asserted connections to the Dudleys of Dudley Castle; there is a similarity in their coats of arms, but association beyond a probable common ancestry with them has never been conclusively demonstrated. Dudley's mother, Susanna Thorne, was descended from Henry II of England through her Purefoy ancestors. As a young man, Thomas Dudley was a page in the household of William, Baron Compton. He raised a company of men following a call to arms by Queen Elizabeth, and served in the army of King Henry IV of France during the French Wars of Religion, and was present at the 1597 Siege of Amiens.

After he was discharged from his military service, Dudley returned to Northamptonshire. He then entered the service of Sir Augustine Nicolls, a relative of his mother's, as a clerk. Nicolls, a lawyer and later a judge, was recognized for his honesty at a time when many judges were susceptible to bribery and other malfeasance. He was also sympathetic to the Puritan cause; the exposure to legal affairs and Nicolls' religious views probably had a significant influence on Dudley. After Nicolls' sudden death in 1616, Dudley took a position with Theophilus Clinton, 4th Earl of Lincoln, serving as a steward responsible for managing some of the earl's estates. The earl's estate in Lincolnshire was a center of Nonconformist thought, and Dudley was already recognized for his Puritan virtues by the time he entered the earl's service. According to Cotton Mather's biography of Dudley, he successfully disentangled a legacy of financial difficulties bequeathed to the earl, and the earl consequently came to depend on Dudley for financial advice. Dudley's services were not entirely pecuniary in nature: he is also said to have had an important role in securing the engagement of Clinton to Lord Saye's daughter. In 1622, Dudley acquired the assistance of Simon Bradstreet who was eventually drawn to Dudley's daughter Anne. The two were married six years later, when she was 16.

Dudley was briefly out of Lincoln's service between about 1624 and 1628. During this time he lived with his growing family in Boston, Lincolnshire, where he likely was a parishioner at St Botolph's Church, where John Cotton preached. The Dudleys were known to be back on Lincoln's estate in 1628, when his daughter Anne came down with smallpox and was treated there.