He was rector of Uffington, Lincolnshire, and of Market Bosworth, Leicestershire, but seems to have assigned the former on 19 March 1641 to Thomas South in exchange for the rectory of King's Cliffe, Northamptonshire.
On the outbreak of the English Civil War Hudson had joined the Royalists (Cavaliers), and after the Battle of Edgehill (23 October 1642) retired to Oxford, where he was brought into contact with the king, was made one of the royal chaplains, and received a Doctor of Divinity (D.D.)
[4] Hudson's known fidelity led to his appointment as scout-master to the army in the northern parts of England, then under the command of the Marquis of Newcastle, a position which he occupied till 1644.
Here he chiefly employed himself in writing and in perfecting a project to deliver the Tower into royalist hands, which he was unable to put into execution.
[4] Hudson returned to Lincolnshire where he raised a party of Royalist horse (cavalry) and stirred up the gentry of Norfolk and Suffolk to more activity on the King's side.
Hudson, who is believed to have borne a commission as a colonel, defended the house with great courage, and when the doors were forced, went with the remnant of his followers to the battlements, and only yielded on promise of quarter, which was afterwards refused.
In reply to his request to be allowed to die on land, a man, named Egborough, knocked him on the head with a musket (6 June 1648), while another parliamentarian cut out his tongue and carried it about as a trophy.
[10] Augustus Charles Bickley, Hudson's biographer in the Dictionary of National Biography (1895) wrote "His boldness, generosity, and almost fanatical loyalty are undoubted".