Thomas Dudley (1576-1653), a Puritan leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in America, was four times elected governor of the colony.

Thomas Dudley was born in England. Little is known about his formative years except that he was an orphan and was befriended by people who saw that he was educated and placed in service to the English nobility. He rose to the post of steward to the Earl of Lincoln and took pride for having recouped the earl's diminishing fortune by raising tenant rents.

Dudley, converted to the Puritan belief by John Cotton, his pastor in England, came into contact with other emergent Puritans. By 1629 he was one of the small group who founded the Massachusetts Bay Company. Along with John Winthrop and other "persons of worth and qualitie," he became one of the eight shareholders in the company who arrived in the New World in 1630.

Dudley...