Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/66

Lodge No mention is made of his son Thomas, but he leaves a bequest to his godson, Thomas Lodge, the son of his son William. Besides his property at West Ham, Essex, he possessed the manor of Malmeynes at Barking, Essex, in right of his first wife (, Environs, iv. 77).

Lodge married, first, Anne, daughter of Sir [q. v.], lord mayor in 1544. By this marriage he had issue five sons—William, [q. v.] the dramatist, Nicholas, Henry, and Benedict—and one daughter, Johanna, the wife of Gamaliel Woodford, merchant, of the Staple. Anne, lady Lodge, to whom Edward White dedicated in 1579 his 'Myrror of Modestie,' died in 1579; 'An Epitaph of the Lady Anne Lodge' is described in the Stationers' Company's 'Register' as by T. Lodge, but no copy is known. He married, secondly, Margaret Parker of Wrottisley, Staffordshire, by whom he had two daughters—one, Sarah, married to Edward White, and the other married to Thomas Leicester of Worleston in Cheshire (Visitation of Shropshire, Harl. Soc. pt. ii. p. 284).



LODGE, THOMAS (1558?–1625), author, second son of Sir [q. v.], lord mayor of London, was born about 1558. His father had houses in both London and West Ham, Essex, and either may have been his birthplace. He entered Merchant Taylors' School on 23 March 1570-1, and, proceeding to Oxford about 1573, he became servitor to [q. v.], who was then a gentleman-commoner of Trinity College. Edmund and Robert Carey, sons of the Earl of Hunsdon (Rosalynde, ded.), were also early friends at the university. Lodge appears to have matriculated from Trinity College, and is doubtless the Thomas Lodge who was admitted to the degree of B.A. on 8 July 1577, and supplicated for that of M.A. on 3 Feb. 1580-1 (Oxford Univ. Reg., Oxford Hist. Soc., vol. ii. pt. iii. p. 69).

On 26 April 1578 Lodge was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn. His elder brother, William, was admitted to the same society on 30 July 1572. But Lodge seems to have soon abandoned the study of law for literature. According to Wood, he had written verses while at Oxford, and his efforts had attracted favourable notice. He obtained a ready entrance into literary society in London. With Robert Greene he was quickly on terms of close intimacy, and Barnabe Rich, Daniel, Drayton, Lyly, and Watson were probably among the personal acquaintances of his youth.

In 1579 his mother died, and he wrote 'An Epitaph,' which was licensed for publication 29 Dec. 1579, but is not known to be extant. Lady Lodge left him a certain portion of her property to defray his expenses as a law student, and he was to receive other portions on attaining his twenty-fifth year, provided that he continued his studies; if he ceased to be what a good student ought to be, the money was, at the will of his father, to be distributed among his brothers. Lodge persisted in his literary endeavours, and doubtless forfeited the legacy. He had already inherited 100l. under the will of his maternal grandmother, Lady Laxton, and he seems to have married before 1583, when, 'impressed with the uncertainty of human life,' he made a will (cf. Gent. Mag. 1834, pt. ii. p. 157). That his family viewed his conduct at the time with disfavour may be inferred from the absence of his name from his father's will in 1583.

In 1579 [q. v.] published his 'School of Abuse,' a well-known attack upon the drama. Early in the following year Lodge made what was practically his first appearance as an author in a bitter retort entitled 'A Defence of Plays.' The tone betrays much personal animosity; the classical drama is alone discussed, and the tract abounds in classical allusions. A few of the quotations from Horace, Ovid, Silius Italicus, and others, are translated into very halting English. A license seems to have been refused the book, and it was circulated privately. Gosson, who did not obtain a copy for a year after its issue, answered it in his 'Plays confuted in Five Actions' (1582), and Lodge briefly rejoined in the preface to his 'Alarum against Usurers' (1584), where he complained that he had been slandered 'without cause.'

Gosson, in his 'Plays confuted,' described Lodge as one who was 'hunted by the heavy hand of God and become little better than a vagrant, looser than liberty, lighter than vanity itself.' But Gosson had little personal knowledge of his assailant's history. He was under the erroneous impression that Lodge's christian name was 'William.' Nevertheless Collier tried to extract from Gosson's words, which he misquoted, proof that Lodge was at one time an impoverished actor. The only positive evidence adduced by Collier is seriously garbled and must be rejected. According to documents at Dulwich College, Philip Henslowe, the theatrical manager, became surety about 1587 for a poor man named Lodge, who owed money to one Topping, a tailor. Collier,