Thomas Plowden was born in Oxfordshire, the third son of Francis Plowden of Shiplake Court (Oxfordshire) and Wokefield Park (Berkshire), and the younger brother of Edmund Plowden (colonial governor). He was a grandson of the Elizabethan lawyer Edmund Plowden.".
Father Plowden was sent on the English Mission about 1622. He was seized, with other priests, by pursuivants in 1628 at Clerkenwell, the London residence of the Jesuits, where h filled various offices of the order, despite the perils of the Mission in London until his death there.
lieutenant is dedicated to Sir John Denham, a poet and the predecessor of Sir Christopher Wren as Surveyor of the King"s Works and a member of the newly founded Royal Society.
