Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rudd, Anthony
RUDD, ANTHONY (1549?–1615), bishop of St. David's, born in Yorkshire in 1549 or 1550, was admitted socius minor at Trinity College, Cambridge, on 6 Sept. 1569, and socius major on 7 April 1570, having graduated B.A. 1566–7 and M.A. 1570. He became B.D. 1577, and incorporated in that degree at Oxford on 9 July of the same year. He proceeded D.D. at Cambridge in 1583. He was installed dean of Gloucester on 10 Jan. 1584. Rudd was chosen bishop of St. David's early in 1594. He was consecrated by Whitgift at Lambeth on 9 June 1594, when his age was stated to be forty-five. He was ‘a most excellent preacher, whose sermons were very acceptable to Queen Elizabeth,’ and the queen on one occasion, after hearing him preach, told Whitgift to tell him that he should be his successor in the archbishopric. Whitgift gave Rudd the queen's message, and though ‘too mortified a man intentionally to lay a train to blow up this archbishop-designed,’ he assured the bishop of St. David's that the queen best liked ‘plain sermons, which came home to her heart’ (Fuller, Church History, bk. x. p. 69). When Rudd next preached, in 1596, he alluded to the queen's age, her wrinkles, and the approach of death, whereat her majesty was highly displeased, and he lost all chance of further preferment.
In his administration of his diocese he ‘wrought much on the Welsh by his wisdom and won their affection;’ but he built up a property for his children by his thrift and by leases of ecclesiastical property (Fuller; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 10 Jan. 1598). He was one of the bishops summoned to the Hampton Court conference. He opposed the oath framed against simony in the convocation of 1604, on the ground that the patron, as well as the clerk, should be obliged to take it (Fuller, Church History, x. 28). He supplied the government from time to time with evidence touching the recusants in his diocese (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 2 Nov. 1611). He died on 7 March 1614–15, leaving three sons—Antony, Robert, and Richard—and was buried with his wife, Anne Dalton, in the church of Llangathen, Carmarthenshire (in which parish he had purchased ‘a good estate’), where a fine tomb, with life-size figures, commemorates them both. His will, dated 25 Jan. 1614, leaves many charitable bequests. The Llangathen estate continued in his family till 1701.
Rudd published four sermons preached at court before Queen Elizabeth.
[Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses and Fasti; Baker MSS., Trinity College, Cambridge; State Papers, Dom.; Fuller's Church History; Register of the University of Oxford, ed. Andrew Clark; Browne Willis's Survey of the Cathedral Church of St. David, 1717; Archdeacon Yardley's MS. Menevia Sacra, and other manuscripts belonging to the Chapter of St. David's Cathedral.]