Roger Dudley Roger Dudley ( born between 1535 and 1545 – 1586 ? / 1590 ) was an English soldier . Dudley was born in London , England , and may have been baptised in Yardley Hastings , Northamptonshire . Dudley ' s parentage has never been satisfactorily established . Genealogist and researcher Marshall Kirk in 1993 published the results of his exhaustive survey of the Sutton Dudley families , and came to the conclusion that Roger was the son of Henry Sutton Dudley . Ultimately , certainty on the point of Roger ' s parentage could be achieved by DNA analysis of the remains of his son , Thomas , Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony , and his probable grandfather , John Sutton , 3rd Baron Dudley , " Lord Quondam " , both of whose burial places are known . Roger may also be the Roger Dudley who was matriculated as pensioner at Christ Church College , Cambridge , in 1566 , but left without a degree . It is believed that Roger married , on June 8 , 1575 , at Lidlington , Bedfordshire , Susannah ( née Thorne ) , herself recorded as having been born on March 5 , 1559 / 60 in Northamptonshire , and baptised at Yardley Hastings , the daughter of Thomas Thorne and Mary Purefoy , ( the Purefoys being of noble descent ) . He is reported to have been a Captain in the Earl of Leicester ' s militia , fighting with a commission from Elizabeth I , and under the banner of Henry of Navarre . He is thought to have died at the Battle of Ivry , France in 1590 . However , the Reverend Cotton Mather of Boston wrote : " Thomas Dudley ' s father was Captain Roger Dudley , - - slain in the wars , when - - his son , and one only daughter were very young " . The will of Thomas Dorne ( Thorne ) of Yardley Hastings , Gent . , dated 29 Oct 1588 , bequeathed " to the children of Susan Dudley , my Daughter , widow , £10 to be equally divided " . ( S1 , S11 ) . Therefore , Roger was dead at the time of the will of his father - in - law , which , written in 1588 , eliminates the Battle of Ivry as a possible date for his death . It is most probable that he died at the Siege of Zutphen in 1586 , having followed his kinsman , Robert Dudley , 1st Earl of Leicester , who was a principal figure in that battle . Marshall K . Kirk suggests that Roger made his home after his father ' s death with Peter Grey , a " Queen ' s servant " , whose manor of Segenhoe was two miles from Lidlington , ( Bedfordshire ) , " where Roger was later married " . Roger and Susannah Dudley raised at least five children , listed as : Susannah is recorded as having died in 1585 during childbirth , at St . Dunstan ' s , London and her name appears again three years later in a will , dated October 29 , 1588 , ( Probate 9 May 1589 ) , in which Thomas Thorne bequeaths . . . " to the Children of Susan Dudley , my Daughter . . . " ( etc . ) Roger and Susannah Thorne Dudley ' s children sired a vast progeny in America . Among many others who founded or were pillars of early New England communities , William Dudley , a son of David , was the first of this line in the family of the lords of Dudley to move to Connecticut , where he founded the settlement of Guilford on the shores of Long Island Sound . He emigrated to New England sometime between 1636 and 1643 , a period corresponding to his uncle Thomas ' s political ascendancy in Massachusetts . Three of William Dudley ' s great grandsons were to give their family name to their new home in the Cornwall hills , when they moved to Owlsbury from Guilford in the mid C17 . Owlsbury was renamed Dudleytown , and thereafter the persistent legend of America ' s most haunted town was born .