Sir Thomas Lodge (c. 1509 – 28 February 1584), was Lord Mayor of London.
Family
Thomas Lodge was the son of William Littleton alias Lodge and born at Cound, Shropshire. 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 Cressage 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.
Early career and marriages
Thomas Lodge was apprenticed in March 1528 to the London Grocer William Pratt, of All Hallows, Honey Lane, and served for about ten years, gaining his freedom of the Worshipful Company of Grocers between 1537 and 1539. 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: and in the latter year both Askewe and Pratt died. Pratt, who left a widow Mawde and young children Christopher and Emma, refers to Stephen Vaughan as his brother.
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. 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. In 1549 Vaughan appointed his 'trustie friend' Thomas Lodge one of the two overseers of his will.
Pratt 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, and daughters were born to them in 1549 and 1551 before Margaret also died and was buried at St. Michael's in 1552. Therefore, upon the death of the wealthy Grocer William Lane in 1552 (whose first wife had been the sister of Peter Osborne), 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.