Thomas Cawarden

Thomas Cawarden (died 25 August 1559) of Bletchingley, Nonsuch Park and East Horsley (Surrey) was Master of the Revels to Henry VIII of England, Edward VI, and Mary I.

Thomas was the son of William Cawarden, a cloth-fuller and citizen of London. In 1528, he was apprenticed to a mercer in London, Owen Hawkins.

By 1542 Cawarden had married. His wife's first name was Elizabeth; her surname is unknown.

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.

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. Tents were provided for festivals, royal progresses, and in military expeditions. 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. Cawarden paid for the tents which had been 'wetted in in the shippe' to be dried and put away on their return.Lady Jane Grey as queen requested tents on 19 July 1553. On 1 January 1559 Mary I ordered her officers to collect arms and armour from Cawarden's house to counter Wyatt's rebellion. Seventeen wagon loads were taken. The patent also allowed him to keep 40 armed and liveried servants at Bletchingley Castle or Palace. 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.

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