Sir Thomas Cawarden (died 25 August 1559) of Bletchingley, Nonsuch Park and East Horsley (Surrey) was Master of the Revels to Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary I. Thomas was the son of William Cawarden, a cloth-fuller and citizen of London.
[2] In 1542 and 1547 he was elected member of parliament for Bletchingley which did not have town status and had a smaller forty-shilling freeholder electorate than the average of the time, poor enough to be challenged in the courts in 1614.
[3] In 1544 Sir Thomas Cawarden received a patent as Master of Revels and Tents, becoming the first head of an independent office and was knighted at Boulogne in September of that year.
In July and August 1547, Cawarden provided 'hales', 'roundhouses', and a kitchen tent for the mission to Scotland during the war of the Rough Wooing which culminated in the Battle of Pinkie.
On 1 January 1559 Mary I ordered her officers to collect arms and armour from Cawarden's house to counter Wyatt's rebellion.
[7] Soon after his appointment, the revels office and its stores were transferred to a dissolved Dominican monastery at Blackfriars, having previously been housed at Warwick Inn in the city, the London Charterhouse, and then at the priory of St. John of Jerusalem in Clerkenwell, to which a return was made after Cawarden's death.
[citation needed] He was appointed High Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex for 1547–48, keeper of Hampton Court in 1550 and joint Lieutenant of the Tower of London (with Sir Edward Warner) in November–December 1558.
[11] A brass plate intended for Thomas Cawarden's monument was found at Loseley Park, the home of his executor, Sir William More, in the 19th century.