Thomas Lodge (Lord Mayor of London)
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.
[16] 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.
[29] 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,[30] prisoner in France.
[40] The death of Mary and accession of Elizabeth made way for Lodge's election, with Roger Martyn, as Sheriff for 1559–60 in the Mayoralty of William Hewett.
In 1559 he headed a commission to survey for the improvement of the river Lea for navigation and water supply between Ware and London (and was further consulted about his findings seven years later).
[43] As his servant John Wanton was gathering military intelligence in Dieppe,[44] Lodge entered office as Lord Mayor of London on 29 October 1562.
[46] During 1562 Lodge, with other citizens, executed an indenture of charter-party with the queen for two ships, the Minion and the Primrose, to 'sail and traffic in the ports of Africa and Ethiopia'.
Having landed at Tenerife they made for Sierra Leone where they obtained a cargo of 300 Africans, and then proceeded across the ocean to Hispaniola, and other ports, where their traffic was eagerly taken up.
[51] The voyage of the Minion and the Primrose did not connect with this: William Rutter's account shows that they set out in February 1562 (civil year 1563) and after an eventful expedition, including violent altercations with the Portuguese, returned to England in August 1563 with 1578 lbs of ivory and 22 buts of graines (chillis), having lost 21 men.
[55] As illustration of his character, John Stow tells of a man Skeggs, formerly a Purveyor to Queen Mary, who was deprived of the freedom of the city for some fault but, on appeal, reinstated.
During this plague he seized a number of capons provided for the Mayor's table, to supply them to Queen Elizabeth, but Lodge made him restore some of them.
Lodge wrote prudently to his friends Lord Robert Dudley and William Cecil, Secretary of State, denying the truth of it, questioning what such hostility towards his office and its dignity might mean, and mildly doubting his own worthiness to occupy it if his word were less valued than that of a servant with a grudge.
[56][57] Lodge is said to have brought Easterlings to England from the silver and copper mines in Germany, to reduce and refine 'the diversity of coins into a perfect standard.
'[58] Lodge further told Agarde that the men who 'fell sick to death with the savour' of the base coins in melting, found relief by drinking from human skulls, which he procured from London Bridge, under a warrant from the council.
[61] In November 1563, under the same sponsors (including Lodge), the Merlin and the John Baptist of London set off with Robert Baker as principal factor, as he had been with the Primrose and Minion.
Their experiences were unhappy: after various encounters with the Portuguese and the African peoples, Baker and his surviving companions were captured and abandoned ashore, while the two ships returned separately to England.
This put out in October 1564, and coincided with the departure from Plymouth of Sir John Hawkins's second slaving voyage in Jesus of Lübeck, with the Salomon the Tiger and the Swallow.
Hawkins accompanied the remaining two craft to Tenerife, and then parted from them to collect his human cargo at Cano Verde, Sierra Leone, and thence across the ocean to Burburoata.
[63] Lodge had various investments in land estates and in his trading speculations, but through a series of suits or challenges to title or profits he was drawn into frequent, costly litigation and, being over-invested, constantly struggled to find ready money, and ran through his capital assets.
His City friends and Companies made several efforts to relieve his circumstances, holding him to be a very trusted man and considerable trader, but his fortunes waned.
It was vested in the family of Nevill of Holt (Medbourne, Leicestershire) until at least 1570, after which it was sold to Sir Thomas,[65] and therefore was not a Kirkby hereditament by descent, as C. J. Sisson suggested.
The stone memorial to Sir Henry Keble, Lord Mayor 1510 and Grocer, and a great benefactor to the rebuilding of that church, was laid over his vault by the testamentary instructions of his son-in-law William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy, who died in 1534.
[69] He described himself as of West Ham in Essex (purchased by Lady Laxton from John Quarles, Draper, and by her bequeathed to Anne and Thomas Lodge in 1579), and left £5 to the poor there.
However two days after that ensealing, now affirming several times the assent and commandment of the said Sir Thomas Lodge, by Codicil this devise is revoked and granted instead to William.
In its place, she and Sir Thomas 'myndinge yet the advauncement of my second sonne to some convenient porcion of lyvinge', the free chapel of Nayland with its advowson, the capital messuage called Bakers in Stoke-by-Nayland, with their lands (both Suffolk) and all their lands in 'Great Horsley' (Essex), (much of which had also descended to Lady Anne through her mother and stepfather Sir William and Lady Laxton), is to be devised and assured to the son Thomas under the same conditions as the former devise.
