1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lodge, Edmund

21989161911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16 — Lodge, Edmund

LODGE, EDMUND (1756–1839), English writer on heraldry, was born in London on the 13th of June 1756, son of Edmund Lodge, rector of Carshalton, Surrey. He held a cornet’s commission in the army, which he resigned in 1773. In 1782 he became Bluemantle pursuivant-at-arms in the College of Arms. He subsequently became Lancaster herald, Norroy king-at-arms, Clarencieux king-at-arms, and, in 1832, knight of the order of the Guelphs of Hanover. He died in London on the 16th of January 1839. He wrote Illustrations of British History, Biography and Manners in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth and James I. . . . (3 vols., 1791), consisting of selections from the MSS. of the Howard, Talbot and Cecil families preserved at the College of Arms; Life of Sir Julius Caesar . . . (2nd ed., 1827). He contributed the literary matter to Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain (1814, &c.), an elaborate work of which a popular edition is included in Bohn’s “Illustrated Library.” His most important work on heraldry was The Genealogy of the existing British Peerage . . . (1832; enlarged edition, 1859). In The Annual Peerage and Baronetage (1827–1829), reissued after 1832 as Peerage of the British Empire, and generally known as Lodge’s Peerage, his share did not go beyond the title-page.