Career
Cornwallis served as one of the first Commissioners of the Province of Maryland (Proprietary Colony of Maryland) and Captain of the colony’s military during the early years of settlement. In 1638, in a naval engagement with Virginian colonists, he captured Kent Island for Maryland. Thomas was probably the son (or brother) of the author William Cornwallis.
As the second son, he could not hope to inherit his father’s land.
The Cornwallis family were Roman Catholic Recusants and therefore George Calvert"s project of an autonomous colony in the New World for English Catholics appealed to him. In 1634 he accompanied Leonard Calvert to what was then Virginia and became a Commissioner to the Governor.
This put him in a powerful advisory position to Leonard Calvert. In 1635 Cornwallis fought the Virginian colonist William Claiborne over the jurisdiction of Kent Island, and captured it in 1638.
In 1644, however, Richard Ingle sailed into Chesapeake Bay with his ship Reformation and fired on Saint Mary's City.
Cornwallis’ land was occupied and many of the buildings he had constructed were destroyed. As a result of these losses and his loss of influence in the colony, Cornwallis returned to England, where he died at some point after 4 March 1675.