♂Roger Dudley

Roger Dudley was an Englishman of Northamptonshire, the father of Thomas Dudley^W, deputy governor and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Thomas Dudley (1576–1653).

The parish register of Yardley Hastings, in Northamptonshire, as printed in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1911, records the baptism of Thomas Dudley, son of Roger and Susanna Dudley, on 12 October 1576. Susanna’s family name, Thorne, comes from a pedigree of the Purefoy family recorded at a heraldic visitation^W, which lists a “Susanna Thorne m. Rogers”; the 1911 article read that entry as her marriage to Roger Dudley. Roger married Susanna Thorne, reportedly at Lidlington, Bedfordshire, on 8 June 1575.

Later family histories call him Captain Roger Dudley and make him a soldier. A history of the Dudley family published in 1886 thought it likely that he was one of the soldiers Queen Elizabeth sent to help Henry of Navarre^W win the French throne, and that he fell at the Battle of Ivry^W, fought in 1590, while Thomas was still a small boy; a compilation of family records printed in 1910 gives the same death as fact. The 1886 book says Thomas was his only son and was brought up by his mother’s relatives. The date and place of Roger’s death are not known.

The 1886 book also held that he belonged to the family of the lords of Dudley Castle, and the 1910 compilation calls him “supposed to have been great-grandson of Edward de Sutton, second Lord Dudley”. Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins (1995) notes that many attempts have been made to place him in the large and prominent Dudley family, without success.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Thomas and Thomas’s son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), and the other to Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith; the two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

Marriage, 1575

The FamilySearch collection England Marriages, 1538 to 1973 gives Roger Dudley and Susan Thorne married at Lidlington, Bedfordshire, on 8 June 1575. The collection gives no original parish register for the entry.