Family and Education

b. c.1573, 3rd s. of Edmund Dudley of Yanwath by Catherine, da. and coh. of Cuthbert Hutton of Hutton John. educ. Queen’s, Oxf. 1587; G. Inn 1594, called 1601. m. Frances, illegit. da. and h. of Christopher Pickering of Threlkeld, s.p.

Offices Held

Reader, Staple Inn 1611; ancient, G. Inn 1617.

Biography

A junior branch of the Dudleys, descended from John Sutton, 4th Baron Dudley, the Dudleys of Yanwath were established there by the marriage of Thomas Dudley and Grace Threlkeld, one of three coheiresses to Sir Lancelot Threlkeld or Thirkeld, during the first half of the sixteenth century. John Dudley’s father, a nephew to John I and Thomas Dudley, held various offices in the west march and was highly regarded by the warden, Lord Scrope, who wrote of him as ‘an honest and sound gentleman, zealous in religion, a man of good calling’ and one of his ‘very friends’. It was probably to this friendship that John Dudley owed his seat, sitting as junior Member to Scrope’s younger brother. As burgess for Carlisle he was eligible to attend committees in 1601 concerning the fortification of the north (3 Dec.) and the regulating of local government in the northern counties.

Although he must have spent some of his time as a lawyer in London, Dudley appears most frequently in connexion with the north country, where he was concerned in several land transactions. In 1610 he shared a 60-year lease of the decayed castle and grounds of Kirkoswold in Cumberland. Six years later he, Sir George Selby and Sir John Fenwick were granted in fee farm extensive properties in the north, part of the estate of the late Earl of Northumberland. In the same year he and other Cumberland and Westmorland gentlemen, including his elder brother Thomas and Sir Christopher Pickering, were commissioned by the Privy Council to sequester lands in dispute between the earls of Dorset and Cumberland.

Shortly before his death intestate Dudley acquired the Westmorland manor of Ormside from his late father-in-law, Pickering. His widow, who later remarried, apparently inherited the estate. Dudley’s eldest brother Richard was a Catholic priest.

Trans. Cumb. and Westmld, Antiq. and Arch Soc. ix. 318 seq.; Nicolson and Burn, Hist. Cumb. and Westmld. i. 413, 611; Cal. Border Pprs. ii. 400, 570-1; D’Ewes, 665, 685; SP39/1/31 and 6/54; HMC Le Fleming, 14; C142/389/112; Wills in York Registry (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xxxii), 128; G. Anstruther, Seminary Priests, i. 106-7.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: B.D.

Notes