Edward Rudge

Edward Rudge (27 June 1763 – 1846) was an English botanist and antiquary.

He was son of Edward Rudge, a merchant and alderman of Salisbury, who possessed a large portion of the abbey estate at Evesham.

He matriculated from Queen's College, Oxford, on 11 October 1781, but took no degree. His attention was early turned to botany, through the influence of his uncle, Samuel Rudge (died 1817), a retired barrister, who formed an herbarium, which passed to his nephew. His uncle's encouragement and the purchase of a fine series of plants from The Guianas, collected by Joseph Martin, led Rudge to study the flora of that country, and to publish between 1805 and 1807 Plantarum Guianæ rariorum icones et descriptiones hactenus ineditæ, fol. London.

Between 1811 and 1834 he conducted a series of excavations in those portions of the Evesham Abbey estate under his control, and communicated the results to the Society of Antiquaries of London, who figured the ruins and relics discovered in their Vetusta Monumenta, accompanied by a memoir from Rudge's son. ln 1842 he erected an octagon tower on the battlefield of Evesham, commemorative of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester.

Rudge was at an early period elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, to the Linnean Society in 1802, and to the Royal Society in 1805. In 1829 he was appointed High Sheriff of Worcestershire.

He died at the Abbey Manor House, Evesham, on 3 September 1846. He married twice. A genus of the family Rubiaceae was named Rudgea in his honour by Richard Anthony Salisbury in 1806 (Trans. of Linn. Soc. viii. 326).

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