Alwyn Ann Ruddock (13 April 1916 – 21 December 2005) was a noted British historian of the Age of Discovery, best known for her research on the English voyages of the 15th-century explorer John Cabot.
[1] Ruddock's first published research was a two-volume work (with David Beers Quinn), The Port Books or Local Customs Accounts of Southampton (Vol.
In 1946, Ruddock moved to Birkbeck College, University of London, where she published Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton, 1270-1500 in 1951.
[2] He wrote a second article about two documents found by the historian Margaret Condon, who had not published them in the 1980s, in part due to the understanding that Ruddock had a book in progress on the topic.
[6][7][8] Jones subsequently set up the Cabot Project along with a number of other historians in Britain, Italy, Canada, and Australia to carry out further investigations into the early voyages, and to search for the evidence for Ruddock's claims.