Paderda’s father sat for Liskeard in 1379 and saw service as both a coroner in Cornwall and the steward of the Cornish estates of Bishop Stafford of Exeter. His landed holdings, situated for the most part in the east of the county, were entailed in 1370, probably just before Thomas’s birth, on his male heirs with successive remainders to his daughters.
Apart from the records of legal proceedings about his wife’s inheritance, only an occasional mention of Paderda has been found prior to his return to Parliament in 1411. Even so, it is clear that his estates made him a figure of some consequence in the shire: in 1395 he had been specially asked to be present at Launceston to witness an agreement between the prior of Launceston and the mayor and commonalty of Dunheved regarding the maintenance of the chapel of St. Mary Magdalene. Early in 1411 he was present in Chancery as a mainpernor for the prior and one of his fellow canons, and other appearances there later on the same year, as well as his stay at Westminster for the Parliament which lasted nearly seven weeks, indicate that he spent a good deal of the year away from home. In 1412 Paderda’s wife sought payment of a debt which had been owing to her grandfather and his heirs for nearly a century, since 1315. Paderda was probably still living in November 1412 when Sir William Coggeshall (knight of the shire for Essex in the same Parliament) was pardoned his outlawry for failing to appear in court to answer his suit for 24 marks.