RUDD, Anthony (1548/9-1615)

Rudd’s father, a yeoman farmer, leased lands near Richmond, Yorkshire and enjoyed connections with the local gentry, including Sir George Bowes^‡. He sent the 14-year-old Rudd – almost certainly his eldest son – to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1562, and six years later assigned most of his property to trustees for his younger sons. On his death in about 1568, Rudd inherited only a four-year leasehold of land, which was doubtless intended to sustain him until he secured an academic position.15 Richmondshire Wills, 213-15. This happened in 1569, when Rudd was elected to a fellowship, probably at the behest of the master, John Whitgift^† (later archbishop of Canterbury), who was seeking support against the college’s leading puritan, Thomas Cartwright. Four years later, Rudd repaid the favour, acting as a witness during Whitgift’s proceedings against John Browning, another Trinity fellow, accused of preaching Novatian heresy: Rudd deposed that Browning’s sermons had been critical of Protestant ministers (such as Whitgift) who had conformed to the Marian regime.16 Al. Cant.; V. Morgan, Hist. Univ. Camb. ii. 68-70; HMC Hatfield, xiii. 113; Hatfield House, CP 138/124-7; C.H. Cooper, Annals of Camb. ii. 314-15. For Novatus, see D. MacCulloch, Hist. of Christianity, 173-5. In 1575 Rudd was joined at Trinity by his younger brother Roger, who forged a career on his coat-tails. Rudd was instituted as vicar of Shudy Camps, Cambs. in 1579 and rector of Stathern, Leics. in 1580, and upon his resignation he was succeeded in each preferment by his brother.17 Al. Cant. (Anthony and Roger Rudd); CCEd.

In 1584 Rudd was installed as dean of Gloucester at Whitgift’s behest, where, in 1589, he and Bishop John Bullingham^† were libelled by some of the godly townsmen. Four years later, Rudd was ordered to attempt the conversion of the Catholic wife and daughter of Sir Thomas Throckmorton^‡ of Tortworth, Gloucestershire.18 B. Usher, Ld. Burghley and Episcopacy, 1577-1603, pp. 74-6; APC, 1589-90, pp. 287, 362; 1592-3, pp. 279-80, 303. Rudd may have acquired the necessary expertise for this task in disputes with his wife’s parents, who were probably the Lancashire couple investigated for recusancy in 1605.19 Rudd, 61; W.O. Roper, ‘Daltons of Thurnham’, Trans. Hist. Soc. Lancs. and Cheshire, n.s. vi. 100-4; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 57-8. He almost certainly married his wife while at Gloucester – his first son was born in 1589/90 – and he retained links with the county for the rest of his life.20 HMC Hatfield, xiv. 149; xv. 47-8; Al. Cant. (Anthony Rudd); C2/Jas.I/R3/63. In June 1594, shortly after preaching his first court sermon, Rudd was consecrated as bishop of St Davids,21 Yardley, 103. which see, although poor by English standards, was the wealthiest in Wales, being worth over £400 a year. His lengthy tenure of the diocese, and his (reputedly) ‘immoderate thrift’ enabled him to purchase a 5,000 acre estate at Aberglasney, Carmarthenshire.22 P. McCullough, Sermons at Court (suppl. cal. 61); Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. vi. 56; C142/354/109; T. Fuller, Church Hist. of Britain (1655), x. 69. Lack of evidence makes it impossible to assess Rudd’s work at local level. However, he preferred his chaplain Bartholomew Carter, his brother Roger and a more distant relative, Robert Rudd, to senior positions within his diocese, and in 1611 he wrote a long report on the suspicious activities of Catholics in Carmarthenshire.23 Yardley, 149, 183-4; C58/3/10; E331/St.Davids/6-8; SP14/67/1.

Rudd’s chief patron at both Gloucester and St Davids was undoubtedly Whitgift, and at Gloucester he may also have been endorsed by Robert Devereux^†, 2nd earl of Essex, a student at Trinity during his tenure as a fellow.24 Usher, 74-6, 118-22. In 1653, Sir John Harington^‡ of Kelston, Somerset, claimed that Queen Elizabeth initially selected Rudd as Whitgift’s successor at Canterbury. The tale is improbable, but a keen desire for preferment may help to explain why Rudd delivered a maladroit court sermon at Lent in 1596. Reputedly following advice from Whitgift about preaching in a plain style, Rudd chose the text, Teach us to number our days [Psalm 90:12], conventionally used as a memento mori. This was a tactless way to address an ageing monarch, especially as Rudd compounded his fault by speculating about Elizabeth’s private prayers: ‘behold, I was born in iniquity, and in sin hath my mother conceived me’; he also imagined the queen speaking of her ‘grey hairs’ and ‘old age’. According to Harington, Elizabeth was said to have retorted that ‘the greatest clerks are not the wisest men’. In the aftermath of this incident, Lord Keeper Sir John Puckering^‡ advised Rudd to keep to his house, from where the hapless bishop petitioned for his release two weeks later, and protested that ‘that which I spake of old age in general is made personal’.25 A. Rudd, A Sermon Preached at Richmond 28 Mar. 1596 (1603), 50, 53; J. Harington, Brief View of the State of the Church of England (1653), pp. 160-3; Fuller, x. 69; HMC Hatfield, vi. 139-40. Unsurprisingly, Rudd never preached before the queen again, and overtures he made for promotion in 1602-3 were ignored.

Shortly after Elizabeth’s death in March 1603, Rudd’s sermon (already circulating in manuscript) was printed. However, there is no evidence that Rudd himself endorsed this enterprise.26 Rudd, Sermon Preached at Richmond, sig. A2; HMC Hatfield, xii. 77, 611. The following June Rudd was allowed to preach before the new king, James I, at Greenwich. Having undertaken to remain ‘within the limits or bounds of the Holy Scripture’, he darkly hinted at the threat Catholics posed to the new regime: ‘manifold is the good effect which followeth the executing of justice upon malefactors’.27 A. Rudd, A Sermon Preached at Greenwich (1603), sigs. B4, B7. He thereby joined an ongoing debate about the possibility of a post-war reconciliation with the Catholic exile community, which had initially been decried by Sir Francis Hastings^‡ in 1598, and was thereafter hotly debated between Hastings, the Jesuit Robert Parsons and Dean Matthew Sutcliffe of Exeter – who, like Rudd, had been a fellow of Trinity in the 1570s.28 F. Hastings, A Watch-Word to all religious and true hearted English-men (1598); N.D. [i.e. Parsons], A Temperate Ward-Word (1599); [Sutcliffe] A Brief Reply to a certain odious and slanderous libel (1600); O.E. [Sutcliffe], A New Challenge made to N.D. (1600); F. Hastings, An Apology or Defence of the Watch-Word (1600); N.D. [Parsons], The Warn-Word to Sir Francis Hastings’ Waste-Word (1602).

Rudd expanded upon his fears of the Catholic threat at the start of the 1604 parliamentary session, during the debate on the bill for the restoration in blood of Charles Paget, a recently returned Catholic exile who had spent 20 years plotting against Elizabeth. This bill received a first reading on 26 Mar., and a second the following day. Following one of these readings, Rudd observed that Paget had promoted ‘not only civil tumult at home, but also hostile invasion from abroad’, and moved that the bill be stayed until Paget had taken the oath of supremacy and attended the services of the Church of England. He subsequently renewed his attack, in which he declared that:

The favourers of the Romish religion have lately taken unusual and extraordinary courage, insulting upon us [the bishops] and our officers; assuring themselves that they have better friends above than we have, they brag now of their number, strength and favourers in court, whereby they are emboldened to speak that openly, which two years ago they durst scarce whisper in the ear.

While acknowledging that he risked being seen as ‘tripping in duty’ towards the king, as James had not only granted Paget a pension but also supported his bill, Rudd concluded that the measure would promote ‘the furtherance of the adversary religion’. Despite his vehement hostility to the body of the bill, Rudd, ‘the first and only man’ to speak out against the measure, was appointed to the committee, which was so badly divided that it proved unable to make any recommendation to the House. Thanks to Rudd the Lords in general, too, now had their doubts, and on 2 April the bill was rejected.29 LJ, ii. 267b, 271a; Oxford DNB (Charles Paget); Devon RO, 3700M, add. 3; Northants RO, Montagu 29/31. The dates in the latter source do not match those in the LJ.

To some extent Rudd’s dislike of the Paget bill may have reflected religious differences within his own family, but his allusion to the activities of crypto-Catholics at court on 2 Apr. was in fact a scarcely veiled attack on the bill’s likely sponsor, Henry Howard^*, earl of Northampton.30 HENRY HOWARD. His two speeches may also have had an important diplomatic context, for with negotiations scheduled to take place over the summer to conclude a peace treaty with Spain, Rudd may have been acting as a mouthpiece for those at court who feared the new king might offer too many concessions.

While Rudd was frequently present in the House of Lords in 1604, his services were employed sparingly. He was twice ordered to help confer with the Commons about the king’s favourite project, the union with Scotland, and was subsequently appointed to attend a conference called in the aftermath of a libel against the Commons’ obstructive attitude towards these plans by John Thornborough^*, bishop of Bristol. In addition, Rudd was a member of the subcommittee of both Houses that was ordered to draft legislation establishing a Union commission, to meet with Scottish delegates, and was later named as one of the commissioners.31 LJ, ii. 277b, 284a, 290b, 296a, 309a. He was included on the committee for the witchcraft bill – another topic in which James took an interest – and a bill to naturalize four Scottish courtiers. He was also required to confer with the Commons about the Tunnage and Poundage bill, and the bill to create an entail of crown lands.32 Ibid. 269a, 272, 275a, 323a, 341a.

Rudd addressed James directly about the Catholic threat in a sermon preached at Whitehall on 13 May 1604. ‘What wise husbandman’, Rudd asked the king,

having sown good seed in his field, will (unless he be sleeping) suffer the enemy to sow tares among the wheat? And what else have the Jesuits and seminary men done within this realm for the space of many years? But one watchful king sitting in the throne of judgement will chase away all evil with his eyes…

Rudd’s task was complicated by the fact that he wished to discourage James from making any concessions to English Catholics at the forthcoming peace conference, without implying that anyone seriously doubted the royal resolve. Towards the end of the sermon, he reminded the king who his true friends were: ‘suppose (which God forbid) that all the people should fall away and serve the gods of the Amorites, yet Joshua and his father’s house [the godly] will serve the Lord’.33 A. Rudd, A Sermon Preached at Whitehall (1604), 17-18, 31. This sermon, delivered four days after the Spanish and Flemish delegations arrived in London for the peace negotiations, was doubtless intended to foster the impression that the English were not seeking peace at any price, particularly as it came a day after Sir Edward Hoby^‡ had reminded the Commons that the Spanish were willing accomplices of the monarchomach ambitions of the papacy.34 HP Commons 1604-29, iv. 727-8; CSP Ven.1603-7, p. 153; A. Thrush, ‘The Parliamentary Opposition to Peace with Spain in 1604: a Speech of Sir Edward Hoby’, PH, xxiii. 301-15.

Back in the Lords, Rudd’s vehement opposition to Catholicism made him an obvious nominee to bill committees to prevent the import of popish books, and to punish recusancy; and when Anthony Browne^*, 2nd Viscount Montagu, attacked the entire Protestant establishment at the third reading of the recusancy bill on 25 June, Rudd was one of those who had him called to order.35 LJ, ii. 290a, 301b, 313b, 324b, 328a. Rudd had been one of the bishops summoned to the Hampton Court Conference in January 1604, but he was not recorded as having spoken.36 W. Barlow, The Sum and Substance of the Conference (1604), 1-3, 85. Godly MPs continued to press for ecclesiastical reform in the Commons during the 1604 session, but little of their draft legislation reached the Lords. Rudd was named to the committee for one of the bills that did, about procedures in the church courts. Many bishops wanted a rigorous enforcement of the ceremonies prescribed in the Prayer Book, but on 23 May, during a debate in Convocation about the use of the sign of the cross in baptism, Rudd showed himself more sympathetic to godly scruples. While he endorsed the need for conformity with royal commands, Rudd feared ‘that many preachers learned, whose consciences are not our custody … will not be easily drawn hereunto’. He therefore asked those who had urged strict conformity, most notably Richard Bancroft^*, bishop of London (later archbishop of Canterbury), to consider ‘a mitigation of the penalty [deprivation], if they cannot be drawn with our reasons to a conformity with us’. He was answered by Bancroft and three others, but then forbidden to make a rejoinder, to which instruction he submitted, ‘because nothing was more dear unto him than the peace of the Church’.37 LJ, ii. 323a; Bodl. Ashmole 1153, ff. 54-9, among many other copies.

Rudd’s anti-Catholic outbursts may have suited the purposes of James’s chief minister, Lord Cecil (Robert Cecil^*, later 1st earl of Salisbury), who wished to persuade the Spanish that England was willing to continue the war unless given favourable peace terms. However, his defence of the godly in Convocation cut across attempts to bring puritan ministers to conformity in the autumn of 1604, at which time Rudd wrote to Cecil, now Viscount Cranborne, asking whether he had offended him, and requesting the opportunity to explain himself. Pleading ill health, Rudd missed the opening of the new parliamentary session in November 1605, but he took his seat when proceedings resumed in January 1606.38 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 457; xvii. 458. He was naturally involved with much of the anti-Catholic legislation which came before the Lords: recusancy legislation; another bill for attainder of the Gunpowder Plotters; the revived bill to prevent the import of popish books; and that to impose the new oath of allegiance on all emigrants.39 LJ, ii. 360b, 367a-b, 380b, 401a, 419b, 427a. In a court sermon on 9 Feb., he alluded to his earlier warnings of the Catholic threat:

as for round executing of justice upon offenders, the great necessity thereof appeareth … which course if we had taken many years ago with the Jesuits, secular priests and other seminary men, we had not been so pestered with them, and endangered by them, as now we are, and of late have been.40 A. Rudd, A Sermon preached before the King’s Majesty at Whitehall (1606), sigs. B4v-C1.

While the Gunpowder Plot thrust recusancy to the top of the political agenda, the Commons continued pressing for reform of ecclesiastical abuses, and on 17 Apr. Rudd was appointed to debate the use of excommunication in Church courts at a conference with the lower House, the proceedings of which he reported back to the Lords on 28 April.41 LJ, ii. 416b, 418b. As a Welsh diocesan, he was also appointed to the committee for the bill to repeal a clause of the Welsh Act of Union, and another for the Welsh cottons bill; while on 15 May he was named to the committee for a Gloucestershire estate bill involving a branch of the Throckmorton family.42 Ibid. 406b, 408b, 433b.

Rudd ceased to attend Parliament regularly after 1606. At the next session in November 1606 he granted his proxy to Robert Bennett^*, bishop of Hereford, although he appeared in the House once, on 2 June 1607. Archbishop Bancroft secured his proxy in the spring of 1610, when he again turned up only once, on 19 April. He attended the opening day of the autumn session on 16 Oct. 1610, but secured a licence of absence two weeks later, awarding his proxy to Bancroft and James Montagu^*, bishop of Bath and Wells.43 Ibid. 449a, 548a, 666a; SO3/5, unfol. (November 1610). He remained active in his diocese, protesting in January 1611 that strict enforcement of the due dates for payment of the clerical subsidies was impractical, as his diocese had never been able to observe them.44 SP46/69, f. 160. At the start of the 1614 Parliament, he assigned his proxy to three of his fellow bishops, and never appeared in the House at all.45 LJ, ii. 686a.

In his will, drafted on 25 Jan. 1615, Rudd provided an endowment for an almshouse, and made provision for his wife’s jointure out of his estate at Aberglasney. His books and half his plate went to his eldest son, Anthony, but his estates were settled on his second son, Rice; there is no evidence that this unusual arrangement was anything but amicable. Rudd died on 9 Mar. 1615, and was buried at Llangathen. His son Rice acquired a baronetcy and fought on the royalist side in the Civil War. The latter’s grandson and heir, Sir Rice Rudd, 2nd bt., sat in the Commons during the Exclusion parliaments of 1679-81, and again from 1689 until his death in 1701.46 PROB 11/125, ff. 255v-7; C142/354/109; Rudd, Rudd Fam. 73-6.