Francis was a Colonel in the Royalist army and was governor of Carmarthen Castle in Wales from June 1644 until it was surrendered to Parliamentary troops in October 1645 after a fierce battle in which his brother, William, was killed.

[3] Lovelace lived in Virginia where his sister, Anne Gorsuch, had migrated after marriage, from 1650 until after the colony was seized by the English Parliamentary commissioners in 1652 when the governor, Sir William Berkeley, dispatched him to France to inform Charles II.

Charles gave his brother, the Duke of York (later to become King James II), rights to the colony of Nieuw Amsterdam when Richard Nicolls took it from the Dutch in 1667.

[1] While in office he purchased Staten Island from the local Native Americans, among whom he sent Church of England missionaries, granted 'freedom of conscience' to the English, Dutch and Swedish populations of the colony, organised infantry and militia companies and expanded New York City's defences.

From 1673 to 1674, Dutch marine Captain Anthony Colve acted as military governor-general until England recovered the colony under the terms of the Treaty of Westminster in 1674.

[10] The Duke of York, blaming Lovelace for the loss of his namesake colony, confiscated his plantation on Staten Island and his English estates for a £7,000 debt.