Owen Ruffhead (1723 – 25 October 1769) was a miscellaneous writer, and the descendant of a Welsh family who were bakers to King George I of Great Britain.
He entered the Middle Temple in 1742, was called to the bar in 1747, and he gradually obtained a good practice, less as a regular pleader than as a consultant and framer of bills for Parliament.
In the meantime he sought to form some political connections, and, with this end in view, he in 1757 started the Con-Test in support of the government against the gibes of a weekly paper called the Test, which was run by Arthur Murphy in the interests of Henry Fox (afterwards first Baron Holland) Both abounded in personalities, and the hope expressed by Samuel Johnson in the Literary Magazine, that neither would be long-lived, was happily fulfilled (see A Morning's Thoughts on Reading the Test and the Con-Test, 1757, octavo).
In about 1767, Bishop William Warburton asked Ruffhead to undertake the task of digesting into a volume his materials for a critical biography of Alexander Pope.
His close application to his later literary works, in addition to his legal duties, undermined his health, and a cold taken in a heated court resulted in his premature death on 25 October 1769.