Roger Ludlow

Judge

  • Born: March 7, 1590 (baptized)
  • Birthplace: Dinton, Wiltshire, England
  • Died: c. 1666
  • Place of death: Dublin, Ireland

English-born colonial American statesman

Ludlow drafted the first legal document resembling a constitution in colonial America. Ludlow’s Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established the principle of self-government by extending limited control to the populace, a revolutionary idea in keeping with the community-values tradition of the Puritans. The basic model of government contained in the Fundamental Orders is essentially still intact.

Areas of achievement: Law, government and politics

Early Life

Roger Ludlow was born into an English Puritan family. He attended Oxford University in 1610 and then trained in law at the Inner Temple in 1612. At the age of thirty-two, Ludlow married Mary Coogan, and they had six children over the next twelve years. In the late 1620’s, Ludlow worked for the Massachusetts Bay Company in England. At that time, the Crown controlled the judiciary and could replace judges who did not decide cases in accordance with the Crown’s legislative or ecclesiastical doctrines. The English subjects, especially the Puritans, became increasingly discontent over arbitrary justice, interminable magisterial appointments of the ruling aristocracy, and the religious struggles between the Anglican Church and the Catholics for power.

The lure of new land, economic prosperity, and the promise of religious freedom prompted Ludlow to sail to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which had been granted a royal charter to settle the area by Charles I. Ludlow arrived in June, 1630, and served for four years as assistant to the General Court of Massachusetts, as land commissioner, land viewer, and justice of the peace. He became deputy governor of Massachusetts in 1634. The wealthy leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony sought to maintain their power by rejecting an electoral process that would allow common citizens into their ranks and by ignoring any limitations on their power that were noted in the charter. Moreover, when the people demanded written codification of their laws, the governor and magistrates refused, claiming that a body of statutes would be inconsistent with the legal system of England, which was based predominantly on common law, and would create great peril for the colony.

When Ludlow’s campaign for the Massachusetts governorship failed, he sought new opportunity by joining the founders of Connecticut. The emigrants to Connecticut encountered immediate difficulties, however, when they learned that Robert Rich, second earl of Warwick, had granted the same land to another group of English gentlemen. Ludlow drafted a settlement called the March Commission, which received approval from the Massachusetts General Court in March of 1636. The settlement allowed the emigrants to inhabit Connecticut for a year, from March, 1636, to March, 1637.

Life’s Work

In 1636, Ludlow joined the colonists who had moved to the Conectecotte River (later renamed Connecticut) to establish settlements near present-day Windsor, Connecticut. The colony’s representatives asked Ludlow to preside over the General Court for the townships of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield. For many years, Ludlow also served as deputy governor of Connecticut.

Most of the Connecticut Indian tribes were friendly to the colonists, but a surprise raid on Wethersfield by the Pequot Indians in 1636 caused Ludlow to be sent as an adviser to the Connecticut force that engaged the Pequots. The Pequots made a stand at at Sasqua, on July 13, 1637. The settlers defeated the Pequots in the Great Swamp Fight. This victory served to warn the rest of the Indian tribes, as well as the nearby Dutch settlers, that the Puritans could assemble a powerful military force.

In August of 1639, Ludlow and his fellow colonists returned to a place known to the local Indians as Unquowa, near Sasqua. The settlers offered glass beads and wool fabric to the Indians for the purchase of about 12 square miles (31 square kilometers) of land. This area encompassed hundreds of acres of flat fields, so they named it Fairfield. Under Ludlow’s leadership, the purchase of the land from the Indians was finalized, and Fairfield was founded, in 1641.

The General Court asked Ludlow to draft orders for the settlers that would establish a representative form of government. Ludlow, the Reverend Thomas Hooker, and Governor John Haynes were prominent in structuring the document. On February 9, 1638, the members of the General Court stepped down from their positions so they could be replaced by a new, democratically elected General Court.

In 1639, with inspiration from Puritan sermons, Ludlow drafted the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which was adopted on January 14, 1639, on land still claimed by Charles I, and is often recognized as the first written constitution for the New World. The orders sought to conjoin the townships into one confederation and to maintain the purity of the Gospel of Jesus. This forerunner of American democracy was to be enacted and enforced by governors and magistrates who were always to be members of an approved Christian congregation.

The Fundamental Orders mandated that admitted inhabitants would elect the colony’s deputies. The deputies could convene the General Court and elect magistrates to serve on that court. This potential for review encouraged the magistrates to be circumspect in the use of their judicial power, unlike the magistracies in other New England colonies. The governor’s powers also were limited, in order to prevent tyrannical rule. Since he was elected, he was subject to the will of the freemen. He himself could not vote (except as a tie-breaker), appoint magistrates, dissolve the General Court, interfere with elections, or serve for more than two years. These limited term appointments forced leaders to relinquish their positions and resume their place in society. Further, the Fundamental Orders did away with titles of nobility, preferential treatment for upper class citizens, primogenitor, and laws that imposed penalties before a trial had taken place.

In 1646, the General Court asked Ludlow to create a code of laws for their commonwealth that would ground the decisions of their magistrates in precedent and authority. This topically alphabetized code became known as the Code of 1650, for the year in which it was adopted by the General Court. It was an extension of the Fundamental Orders. Together, the Fundamental Orders and the Code of 1650 guaranteed people the right to elections, to liberty, to freedom from taxation without representation, and to enumerated privileges and immunities from persecution. Any powers not clearly granted to the state belonged to the people. The Code of 1650 also contained laws that prohibited heresy, idleness, and stubbornness.

Ludlow served as a commissioner of the United Colonies of New England and, from 1651 to 1653, helped draft the New England Confederation for the initial protection of the colonies of New Haven, Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, and Plymouth. The confederation provided for mutual aid and cooperation in resisting attacks by Indians, hostile countries, or fugitives. No colony was permitted, without the general consent, to engage in war, unless there was a sudden or unavoidable attack.

When the citizens of Fairfield felt threatened by the Dutch, they ignored the confederation and declared war, appointed Ludlow commander, and raised a volunteer army. The General Court of New Haven disagreed with these actions and punished Ludlow’s officers for insurrection. Ludlow was angered and humiliated. He refused to remain in their jurisdiction and returned to England in 1654. He later settled in Dublin, Ireland, where he served as a law officer for Oliver Cromwell for the remainder of his professional life. While the exact date of Ludlow’s death is unknown, most historians believe he died around 1666. After the Restoration of Charles II, the king ratified the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut in the Charter of 1662. After the American Revolution in 1776, however, all references to royalty were removed from the Charter of 1662. It was readopted as the Constitution of the State of Connecticut.

Significance

Ludlow was a gifted leader and energetic statesman who provided important public services for colonial Connecticut. Ludlow’s legacy was the framing of a legal model for constitutional rights in the New World. While this model initially extended to the inhabitants of wilderness settlements along the Connecticut River, the model represented affected all the constitutions of colonial and post-revolutionary America.

The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut protected the rights of the people by ensuring that legal authority did not become arbitrary and tyrannical. The requirement that aristocratic magistrates be subject to election by secret ballots was revolutionary. Ludlow’s essential principles demanded due process of law, equal treatment, and self-government free from any outside power. Many other territories also adopted the Fundamental Orders, which were produced for a Puritan citizenry that refused to allow government to control its faith. The principle of religious freedom put forward by Ludlow acknowledged that God’s authority supercedes all liberties and that the community must be guided by the study and application of Christ’s Gospel. In the Fundamental Orders, Connecticut leaders rejected the monarchic conception of power that was in practice back in England and taking root in other colonies. Incorporating democracy and equality, Ludlow’s Fundamental Orders became, in essence, the first constitution in the New World. The Code of 1650 has served Connecticut to this day.

Bibliography

Adair, John. Puritans: Religion and Politics in Seventeeth-Century England and America. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Sutton, 1998. Traces the seventeenth century political and religious influence of the Puritans in the New England colonies.

Chartrand, Rene. Colonial American Troops, 1610-1774. Oxford, England: Osprey, 2002. Documents the colonists’ creation of militias with other colonies and alliances with different tribes in order to protect themselves from Indians.

Cohn, Henry S. “Connecticut Constitutional History, 1636-1776.” Connecticut Bar Journal 64, no. 5 (October, 1990): 330-334. Cohn, former assistant attorney general for Connecticut, outlines the original government at the founding of Connecticut, along with the factors that led to the drafting of the Fundamental Orders, and examines how the government actually functioned before the American Revolution.

McCook, Philip. “The Fundamental Orders.” Connecticut Bar Journal 13, no. 1 (January, 1939): 52-65. Speech delivered by Connecticut Supreme Court Judge McCook at the three-hundredth anniversary celebration of the adoption of the Fundamental Orders by the Connecticut colonies.

Taylor, John. Roger Ludlow: The Colonial Lawmaker. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1900. Reprint. Holmes Beach, Fla.: Gaunt, 2004. This biographical book focuses on the challenges and accomplishments of Roger Ludlow.

Fall, 1632-January 5, 1665: Settlement of Connecticut; July 20, 1636-July 28, 1637: Pequot War; September 8, 1643: Confederation of the United Colonies of New England; May, 1659-May, 1660: Restoration of Charles II.