Roger Ludlow

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Roger Ludlow (1590-1664) was one of the founders of the Colony of Connecticut. He was born in England. Roger was the second son of Thomas Ludlow and Maiden Bradley. He matriculated Balliol College, Oxford 1609, and was admitted to the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple in 1612.

Ludlow landed in America in 1630, and located at Dorchester, where he remained for five years. During that period he was chosen magistrate in the Court of Assistants for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He married Mary Endicott, a sister of Governor John Endicott of Massachusetts. He was elected as Deputy Governor in 1634. In 1635 he was defeated by John Haynes for Governor.

In 1635 Roger Ludlow joined with other Puritans and Congregationalists who were dissatisfied with the rate of Anglican reforms, and sought to establish an ecclesiastical society subject to their own rules and regulations. The Massachusetts General Court granted them permission to settle the cities of Windsor, Warwick, and Hartford in the area now known as Connecticut. Ownership of the land was called into dispute by the English holders of the Warwick Patent of 1631. The Massachusetts General Court established the March Commission to mediate the dispute, and named Roger Ludlow as its head. The Commission named 8 magistrates from the Connecticut towns to implement a legal system. The March Commission expired in March 1636, after which time the settlers continued to self-govern.

On May 29, 1638 Ludlow wrote to Massachusetts Governor Winthrop that the colonists wanted to "unite ourselves to walk and lie peaceably and lovingly together." Ludlow was a framer of a document called the Fundamental Orders, which was adopted on January 14, 1639. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut is the world's first written constitution for a self-governing people.

Roger Ludlow was a magistrate in 1637 and 1638, and was then named as the first Deputy Governor of Connecticut. He was also chosen as a Magistrate in 1640, and every year from that date until he left the colony in 1654, except in 1642 and 1648, when he was again chosen Deputy Governor. In 1643 Ludlow was one of the representatives from Connecticut in the negotiations which led to the con-federation of the colonies.

He founded Fairfield in 1639 and Norwalk in 1651.

In 1646 Ludlow was asked by the Connecticut General Court to draft a comprehensive set of laws "grounded in precedent and authority and fitted to the necessities of the new civilization." The result was “The Code of Laws of 1650”, or Ludlow Code, which is archived in the Connecticut Colonial Records.

In 1654 Ludlow returned to England, then later moved to Ireland, where he died in 1664.

Roger Ludlowe Middle School and Fairfield Ludlowe High School, both in Fairfield, are named for him.

[edit] References

1. John M. Taylor, Roger Ludlow The Colonial Lawmaker, 1900
2. Henry S. Cohn, Connecticut Constitutional History, 1636-1776, 1988
3. Christopher Fennell, Plymouth Colony Legal Structure, 1998
4. W. H. Gocher, Wadsworth, or the Charter Oak, 1904