LUDLOW, Rocca; (c.1590-e.1665). An Eng lish colonial lawyer and administrator in Amer ica. Ile was born at Dinton, Baycliffe. Wilt shire: was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and afterwards studied law. lie went to New England in 1630. and became one of the first set tlers of Dorchester, Mass. For four years there after he was a member of the Board of Assistants for Massachusetts part of the time repre senting the colony as agent in London, and in 1634 was chosen Deputy governor. In 1635 he was defeated by .Tohn Haynes (q.v.) for Governor of the colony, and the pique at this defeat and dissatisfaction with his surroundings led him in the following year to join, with a company of his Dorchester neighbors, the migration led by Thomas Hooker (q.v.) into the lower Connecti cut valley. Ile settled at Windsor, was one of the first commission of government, in :11y. 1639, was a member of the convention at Hartford called to formulate a constitution for the Connecticut towns• and is believed to have drafted the famous document known as the 'Fundamental Orders.' In the following April he was elected Deputy Governor of Connecticut. In August he accompanied Capt. John Mason (q.v.) in his second expedition against the Pe gaols. On the election of Haynes, who had also
removed from Massachusetts to Connecticut, to the office of Governor, Ludlow, who called him his `evil genius•' left Windsor and founded the town of Fairfield, but continued as Deputy Governor. From 1643 to 1645 he was a commissioner in the Congress of the United Colonies of New England. In 1646 he was appointed by the General Court to codify the laws of Connecticut. His codifica tion (published at Cambridge, Mass., in 1672) was officially adopted in 1650, and was long known as `Mr. Ludlow's Code.' It won for him the title of the 'Father of Connecticut Jurispru dence.' In 1654. after being censured by the General Court at New Haven for influencing Fairfield to make an unauthorized attack upon the Manhadoes, he left the colony in disgust for Virginia. In 1656 he was in England, and ap pears to have settled in Ireland. but nothing further is known of him. Consult : Johnston, The Genesis of a New England State (Baltimore, IS83), "Johns Hopkins University Studies," No. 11; and Johnston, Connecticut 1887), in the "American Commonwealths Series."