Joseph Dudley
Royal governor of Massachusetts
Died when: 72 years 192 days (870 months)Star Sign: Libra
Joseph Dudley (September 23, 1647 – April 2, 1720) was a colonial administrator, a native of Roxbury in Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the son of one of its founders.
He had a leading role in the administration of the Dominion of New England (1686–1689) which was overthrown in the 1689 Boston revolt.
He served briefly on the council of the Province of New York where he oversaw the trial which convicted Jacob Leisler, the ringleader of Leisler's Rebellion.
He then spent eight years in England in the 1690s as Lieutenant-Governor of the Isle of Wight, including one year as a Member of Parliament for Newtown (Isle of Wight).
In 1702, he returned to New England after being appointed governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and Province of New Hampshire, posts that he held until 1715.
His rule of Massachusetts was characterized by hostility and tension, with political enemies opposing his attempts to gain a regular salary and regularly making complaints about his official and private actions.
Most of his tenure was dominated by the French and Indian Wars, in which the two provinces were on the front lines with New France and suffered from a series of major and minor French and Indian raids.
He orchestrated an unsuccessful attempt to capture the Acadian capital of Port Royal in 1707, raised provincial militia forces for its successful capture in 1710, and directed an unsuccessful expedition against Quebec in 1711.
Dudley's governorship initiated a hostility in Massachusetts toward royal governance, most frequently over the issue of the salaries of crown officials.
The colonial legislature routinely challenged or disputed the prerogatives of the governor, and this hostility affected most of the governors of Massachusetts up to the American Revolutionary War and the end of British rule.
Dudley's rule of New Hampshire, however, was comparatively uncontroversial.
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