Ruggles was born on October 20, 1711 to Rev. Timothy Ruggles. He was grandson of Capt. Samuel Ruggles of Roxbury and Martha Woodbridge, who was a granddaughter of Governor Thomas Dudley. He graduated from Harvard in 1732; studied law, and established himself in practice in Rochester. In 1735 he married Mrs. Bathsheba Newcomb, widow of William Newcomb and the daughter of the Hon. Melatiah Bourne of Sandwich, Massachusetts. He was a military officer during the French and Indian War, rising to the rank of brigadier general in 1758.
He served multiple terms in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and was its speaker from 1762 to 1764. He participated in the October 1765 Stamp Act Congress as a representative of the Massachusetts General Court, and was elected its president. Called to devise a common colonial response to the Parliament's 1765 Stamp Act, Ruggles refused to sign both the Declaration of Rights and Grievances sent by the Congress to King George III and the accompanying petitions sent to both Houses of Parliament. For this, he was publicly censured by the General Court. He subsequently became one of the leading Tories of New England. He commanded the Loyal American Association and was a Mandamus Councillor appointed by General Gage in Boston. The Loyal American Association vowed to:
Not submit to rebellious assembly.
Enforce obedience to the King.
Defend each other if imperiled by unlawful assembly.
Repel force with force.
Use retaliation if any member or their property were injured.
Ruggles left his daughter, Bathsheba Spooner, behind in Massachusetts. On July 2, 1778 she became the first woman executed in the newly independent United States of America. She was hanged while 5 months pregnant for the crime of plotting, with a 17 year old Continental Army soldier with whom she was having an affair, and two British soldiers the death of her husband Joshua Spooner who was savagely beaten and dumped in a well. Three of Ruggles' sons, Timothy, John, and Richard, followed him into exile and settled in Annapolis County, Nova Scotia but his three daughters and his wife did not. A grandson, also named Timothy Ruggles, was a political figure in Nova Scotia. Ruggles was bothered by a hernia in later years and in August 1795 on the occasion of a visit by guests while taking them on a tour of his garden he aggravated his poor health. Four days later he died and was buried on the eastward side of the Old Trinity Church, the church which he had been a major financial contributor in Middleton, Nova Scotia. A monument was later erected to his memory by his great grand-daughter, Eliza Bayard West. Ruggles has been described as a vegetarian for most of his life. It was noted that "he drank nothing stronger than a small beer & was almost a vegetarian in a society in which gluttony was the one universal excess."
