High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Joseph Dudley (23 September 1647 – 2 April 1720) was an English colonial administrator. A native of Roxbury, Massachusetts and son of one of its founders, he had a leading role in the administration of the unpopular Dominion of New England (1686–1689), and served briefly on the council of the Province of New York, where he oversaw the trial that convicted Jacob Leisler, the ringleader of Leisler`s Rebellion. He spent eight years in the 1690s as lieutenant governor of the Isle of Wight, including one year as a Member of Parliament. In 1702 he was appointed governor of the provinces of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire, posts he held until 1715.