Dudley, Joseph, 1647 - 1720

Joseph Dudley was the son of Governor Thomas Dudley and Katherine Dighton of Roxbury, Massachusetts and half-brother to the poet Anne Bradstreet.  Graduating from Harvard (1665) with the prospect of being a minister, he instead followed a political career.  He was a representative (1673-1675) and assistant (1676-1685) to the Massachusetts legislature and a commissioner of the New England Confederation. During King Philip's War he served in the Narragansett Campaign and fought at the Great Swamp Fight.  Massachusetts authorities sent him to England in 1682 as agent to defend the Colony's interests.  In 1684, when the Colony's charter was revoked, Dudley was appointed president of Andros' council and interim governor of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and the King's Province of Rhode Island.  In 1689, he was deposed and arrested with Andros and eventually sent to England for prosecution.  Found not guilty, Dudley returned to America in 1691 as chief of council for New York, a position that required him to negotiate with the colony's Native communities.  He later became deputy governor of the Isle of Wight and a Member of Parliament.   Dudley returned to New England in 1702 to become governor, a position he held until 1715.  As governor, his Indian policies were varied.  He was a member of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and appointed one of the commissioners for the Mohegan Case in 1705.  ODNB.  ANBO.  Bodge, Soldiers in King Philip's War, 70.