Sir Thomas Andrewes (died 1659) was a London financier who supported the parliamentary cause during the English Civil Wars, and sat as a commissioner at the High Court of Justice for the trial of Charles I.
During the 1630s he traded with the New England colonies, and as a member of the guild of the Leathersellers' Company, ran a successful wholesale linen drapery business at the White Lion, Fish Street Hill.
[2][5] By the end of the decade he had been the master of the guild (from 1638 to 1639), and had made enough money to become an undersharer holder in a syndicate that farmed customs (a speculative venture where the syndicate paid the Crown a fixed sum against the hope of collecting a larger sum from those who owed custom revenue to the Crown).
He attended the trial in Westminster Hall on 2 and 23 January, and on the 27th he, along with the other commissioners present, stood up to indicate his assent to the death sentence.
[10] His successful performance of his duties during his second period as Lord Mayor was of importance to the Commonwealth as he was responsible for keeping the capital quiet, and a bulwark against any resurgence of Royalism in support of the King Chales II during the third English Civil War.
Under Section XXXVIII of the Indemnity and Oblivion Act, he, like the other dead regicides, was not exempted from the general pardon so that his property could be sequestrated by the state.
[2] According to Noble "To the Royalists he was peculiarly obnoxious, as one of the High Court of Justice, where he had assisted in the condemnation of other illustrious characters, besides the unhappy monarch.
... Had he lived to have seen the return of his banished Sovereign, he would either have expiated his crime by an ignominious and painful death, or spent the remainder of his life in poverty and imprisonment.