He graduated B.A. from
Trinity College, Cambridge in 1567, and M.A. in 1570. He became Dean of Gloucester in 1584, and
Bishop of St. David's in 1594. In 1596 he preached a celebrated sermon before
Elizabeth I at
Richmond Palace, in which he made extensive allusions to her approaching old age (she was 63 in 1596, and he made play of this as the
astrology, on his text “O teach us to number our days”) and physical signs of it.
Thomas Fuller in his
Church History of Britain claims that this sermon, and a later one in 1602, offended the Queen, one of his sources being
Sir John Harrington's account. Anecdotally
John Whitgift is supposed to have led Rudd on to preach plainly, and Rudd lost the succession as
Archbishop of Canterbury by so doing, but Whitgift survived Elizabeth in any case. He attended the
Hampton Court Conference of 1604; he was sympathetic to
Puritanism. He is buried in the church at
Llangathen, where his wife erected a “bedstead” tomb. Rudd had acquired adjacent property at
Aberglasney. ==Works==