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.]
RUDD, SAYER (d. 1757), divine, was assistant in 1716, ‘when very young,’ to the baptist church at Glasshouse Street, London. Later he was a member of Edward Wallen's church at Maze Pond, Southwark. There he was publicly set apart for the ministry, with laying on of hands, on 2 July 1725, as successor to Thomas Dewhurst at Turner's Hall, Philpot Lane, London. In 1727 the congregation of the baptist chapel in Devonshire Square was united with his own, which removed to Devonshire Square. In April 1733 he became much unsettled in mind, and applied to his congregation for leave to visit Paris. This being refused, he ‘took French leave.’ At this time he offered his services as preacher to the quakers, apparently having failed to grasp their leading principle of unpaid ministry. He then applied to the lord chancellor for admission into the established church, but his ambition being beyond the living of 60l. per annum, which was offered him, he finally studied midwifery under Grégoire and Dussé of Paris, and proceeded to the degree of M.D. at Leyden. On returning to London he had some practice, and attended and took down in shorthand the lectures of Sir Richard Manningham [q. v.] One of these, ‘The certain Method to know the Disease,’ he published at London in 1742, 4to.
Meanwhile the Calvinistic baptist board accused him of unitarianism, and issued a minute against him. He defended himself in three ‘Letters,’ published 1734, 1735, and 1736, and in ‘Impartial Reflections,’ London, 1735, 8vo. The board, which met at Blackwell's Coffee House, Queen Street, disowned him on 26 Feb. 1735. He then preached for two years at a church built for him in Snow's Fields by Mrs. Ginn. After her death in 1738 he conformed to the established church, and was presented by Archbishop Potter to the living of Walmer, Kent, and in 1752 to the vicarage of Westwell in the same county. He then lived near Deal, and kept a school. Rudd died at Deal on 6 May 1757.
Besides many separate sermons he published:
- ‘An Elegiac Essay on the Death of John Noble,’ London, 1730, 8vo.
- ‘Poems on the Death of Thomas Hollis,’ London, 1731, 8vo.
- ‘An Essay towards a New Explication of the Doctrines of the Resurrection, Millennium, and Judgment,’ London, 1734, 8vo.
- ‘Six Sermons on the Existence of Christ's Human Spirit or Soul,’ 1740, 8vo.
