Thomas Lodge (Lord Mayor of London)

Sir Thomas Lodge (c. 1509 – 28 February 1584), was Lord Mayor of London.

Family Thomas Lodge was born around 1509 and was the son of William Littleton alias Lodge and born at Cound, ShropshireC. Welch, 'Lodge, Thomas (d.1584)', Dictionary of National Biography (London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900), Vol. 34. a manor owned by the Earls of Arundel from antiquity down to 1560.Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, Transactions, Vol. 36, Part 1. 1913. Available from: https://shropshirearchaeologyhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/shropshire-transactions-vol.-36-part-1.pdf

His paternal grandfather was Sir William Littleton (d. 8 November 1507), knighted after the Battle of Stoke, eldest son and heir of Sir Thomas Littleton (d.1481), justice and author of Littleton's Tenures. According to Bernard:

Sir William Littleton (1450–1507) eldest son of the judge, had issue by his second marriage one son John, his heir, and one daughter Anne, the wife of Thomas Rouse of Ragley in Warwickshire. She was mother of the Lady Abbess of Ramsey. Sir William had likewise a natural son called William Littleton alias Lodge, afterwards of CressageNear Much Wenlock; . in Shropshire. He [i.e., Sir William] was the first of the family who bore the triton as a supporter. He sealed many deeds with the same crest as the judge, his father, and spelled his name Littleton. He lived in great splendor at Frankley till his death November the 8th 1508, and was interred in the great church of the abbey of Hales-Owen.

Sir William Littleton's legitimate son, John Littleton (c.1499 – 17 May 1532), married Elizabeth Talbot, one of the three daughters and coheirs of Sir Gilbert Talbot (d. 22 October 1542) of Grafton by Agnes Paston, by whom he had seven sons and two daughters, including his eldest son and heir, Sir John Littleton.

Sir William Littleton's illegitimate son, William Littleton alias Lodge, was the father of Sir Thomas Lodge.G. Grazebrook & J. P. Rylands (Eds), The Visitation of Shropshire taken in the Year 1628, Part II, Harleian Society Vol. XXIX, (London 1889), pp. 284–85 (Internet Archive).C.J. Sisson, 'Thomas Lodge and his Family', in Thomas Lodge and other Elizabethans (Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass. 1933), at pp. 7–9: "If Sir Thomas was a scion of the Littleton family, it could surely only have been with a bar sinister."

Early career and marriages Thomas Lodge was apprenticed in March 1528 to the London Grocer William Pratt, of All Hallows, Honey Lane,Will of William Pratt, Grocer of London (P.C.C. 1539, proved 12 June). and served for about ten years, gaining his freedom of the Worshipful Company of Grocers between 1537 and 1539.Sisson, 'Thomas Lodge', pp. 10–11, citing Wardens' Accounts, Grocers' Hall, vol. 403, fol. 281 b, and vol. 404, fol. 94 a. By his mother Emma (Bodley)'s second marriage, William Pratt became the stepson of Sir Christopher Askewe, Draper, Lord Mayor 1533–34, and alderman for Cheap ward 1534–39:A.B. Beavan, The Aldermen of the City of London Temp. Henry III to 1912 (Corporation of the City of London, 1913), II, p. 25 (Internet Archive). Some relationships described in this work are unreliable. and in the latter year both AskeweWill of Sir Christopher Askwe, Alderman of London (P.C.C. 1539). and Pratt died. Pratt, who left a widow Mawde and young children Christopher and Emma,Named by their grandmother: Will of Dame Emma Askewe, Widow of St John the Evangelist, London (P.C.C. 1554). refers to Stephen Vaughan as his brother.Will of William Pratt, Grocer of London (P.C.C. 1539, Dyngeley quire). Not to be confused with the Draper of the same name and similar date.

Lodge's first marriage was to Mawdleyn, sister of Stephen Vaughan. Travelling much for mercantile purposes, in February 1545 he was acting for Vaughan in England and abroad in the surveillance of suspicious persons, and the delivery of secret letters to the Privy Council.J. Gairdner and R.H. Brodie (eds), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Vol XX Part 1: January–July 1545 (HMSO 1905), p. 107, item 250 (British History online, accessed 29 April 2017). His London residence was then in St Michael, Cornhill, which as churchwarden he rented from the parish: when Mawdleyn died in 1548 she was buried within that church.W.H. Overall (ed.), The Accounts of the Churchwardens of the Parish of St Michael, Cornhill (Alfred James Waterlow, for the vestry, London ), pp. 61–65 (Internet Archive). In 1549 Vaughan appointed his 'trustie friend' Thomas Lodge one of the two overseers of his will.Will of Stephen Vaughan (P.C.C. 1549).

PrattPratt's will used the Protestant formula 'to be saved by the meryts of His bitter passion and deathe and by noon other meanes'. and Vaughan were of Reformist sympathy, and Lodge was with them. The reign of Edward VI advanced his expectations. He served as Warden of the Grocers' Company in 1548, in Sir William Laxton's sixth term as Master. Sir William and Lady Laxton were particularly remembered in Pratt's will, a connection no doubt favourable to Lodge's progress. He soon remarried to Margaret Parker, his former maidservant,A. McConnell, 'Lodge, Sir Thomas (1509/10–1585), merchant', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. and daughters were born to them in 1549 and 1551 before Margaret also died and was buried at St. Michael's in 1552.Sisson, 'Thomas Lodge', citing 'St Michael Cornhill, Composite register: baptisms and marriages 1546–1657 and burials 1546–1653' (London Metropolitan Archives, P69/MIC2/A/001/MS04061). Therefore, upon the death of the wealthy Grocer William Lane in 1552 (whose first wife had been the sister of Peter Osborne),Will of William Lane, Grocer of London (P.C.C. 1552, written August, proved December). Lodge took to his third wife Lane's widow Anne, née Loddington, Laxton's elder stepdaughter, and became stepfather to her two sons and two daughters.

Alderman and Sheriff Lodge was among the Merchant Adventurers and Merchants of the Staple co-opted as signatories to the Letters Patent for the Limitation of the Crown on 21 June 1553.'Letters Patent for the Limitation of the Crowne' from the transcript of Ralph Starkey in MS Harl. 35, fol. 364: J.G. Nichols (ed.), The Chronicle of Queen Jane, and of Two Years of Queen Mary, Camden Society Vol. XLVIII (1850), pp. 91–100, at p. 100 (Google). Following the proclamation of Queen Mary on 19 July, he was among the proposers of John Machell as alderman for the Vintry ward, made vacant by the transfer of William Hewett to Candlewick on 18 July, and Machell was sworn on 20 July.A.B. Beavan, The Aldermen of the City of London Volume 2 (Corporation of the City of London, 1913), Candlewick: pp. 80–87, citing Rep. 13(i) fo. 67 & Letter Book R fo. 262; Vintry: pp. 205–15, Rep. 13(i) fo. 67b. (British History online, accessed 22 May 2017). Three days later George Barne named Thomas Offley to be a Sheriff for the coming year, and Lodge, who was then in Flanders and not yet an alderman, was chosen by the Commons on 1 August to serve as Sheriff with him.W.D. Hamilton (ed.), A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors, by Charles Wriothesley (3 vols), Vol II, Camden Society New Series XX (1877), pp. 90–93. The death of Stephen Kirton made way for Lodge's election as alderman to the Cheap ward on 23 August, but he was not sworn until 24 October, after the swearing of the Sheriffs at Michaelmas and the Coronation of Queen Mary on 1 October 1553.Beavan, Aldermen of the City of London II, Cheap: pp. 99–106, citing Rep. 13(i), ff. 74, 88b. William Hewett therefore served as Sheriff with Offley for the year 1553–54.

Lodge became Master of the Grocers' Company for his first term in 1554–55.Sisson, 'Thomas Lodge', p. 14, citing Grocer's Company, Wardens' Accounts, vol. 404, fol. 454 a.

Lodge engaged in foreign trade in Antwerp, and was an enterprising supporter of schemes for opening new markets in distant countries. On 25 November 1553 a sum of £15,426. 19s. 1d. sterling was paid to him and other merchants in consideration of money advanced to the Queen by them at Antwerp.Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series 1553-8, p. 30. In 1555 he was one of the 24 named Assistants to the Governor and Consuls in Queen Mary I's Charter to the Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands (Muscovy Company).E. Goldsmid (ed.), The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, collected by Richard Hakluyt, Preacher, Vol. III: North-Eastern Europe and Adjacent Countries, Part II: The Muscovy Company and the North-Eastern Passage (E. & G. Goldsmid, Edinburgh 1886), pp. 101–112, at p. 104 (Internet Archive). He received Mary's thanks in a letter dated from Richmond 9 August 1558, for his willingness to become surety for redeeming Sir Henry Palmer,R.J.W. Swales, 'Palmer, Sir Henry (by 1496–1559), of London and Wingham, Kent', in S.T. Bindoff (ed.), The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509–1558 (Boydell and Brewer, 1982). History of Parliament online. prisoner in France.Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series 1547–80, p. 105.

Lodge was principal mourner, and his brother-in-law John Machell (husband of Joan, Anne Lodge's sister) second mourner, at the funeral of William Laxton in August 1556,J.G. Nichols (ed.), The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, Camden Society (London 1848), Original Series Vol. XLII, pp. 111–12 (Internet Archive). in the late summer of Machell's shrievalty, and both were overseers of Laxton's will.Will of Sir William Laxton, Alderman of London (P.C.C. 1556). Lodge and Dame Joan Laxton were therefore involved in the making of Laxton's grave in the violatedW.G. Walker, A History of the Oundle Schools (Grocers' Company, 1956), p. 50 (pdf p. 38). and dis-endowed Keble chantry in St Mary Aldermary, where both were later buried.W.J. Thoms, A Survey of London written in the year 1598, by John Stow (Chatto & Windus, London 1876), p. 95 & n. (Google). Lodge and Dame Joan worked with the Grocers' Company for Laxton's will in the foundation of Oundle School, and Lodge continued to occupy under lease a house on the Cornhill, London which was among the school's endowments, into the 1570s.'The Attorney-General v. The Grocers' Company (1843)', C. Beavan, Reports of Cases in Chancery, Argued and Determined in the Rolls Court during the time of Lord Langdale, Master of the Rolls, VI: 1842, 1843 – 6 & 7 Victoria (William Benning and Co., London 1845), pp. 526–536 (Google). See also Sisson, Thomas Lodge pp. 54–58.

Also in 1556 Lodge sold the manors of Hawkstone and Soulton, near Wem, to Sir Rowland Hill and Sir Thomas Leigh.The National Archives, Discovery Catalogue piece description 'Bargain and sale (1556)', 215/31 (Shropshire Archives). There are indications that the Lodge family's familiarity with the manor and the statecraft of Sir Rowland Hill who published the Geneva Bible, were memorialized in Shakespeare's play As You Like It, itself inspired by Lodge's son Thomas Lodge's book Rosalynde.

In 1558 Lodge was among the principal overseers for John Machell's will,Will of John Machell, Alderman of St Peter Westcheap, City of London (P.C.C. 1558). a duty which occupied him until at least 1568.Sentence of John Machell, Alderman of London (P.C.C. 1568).