His father "Colonel" William Crowne, accompanied the earl of Arundel on a diplomatic mission to Vienna in 1637, and wrote an account of his journey.
He emigrated to Nova Scotia where he received a grant of land from Cromwell, but the French took possession of his property, and the home government did nothing to uphold his rights.
[1] He was born in London on 6 April 1641,[2] and emigrated to Nova Scotia in 1657 with his father, a joint proprietor of the colony, aboard the ship Satisfaction, and studied at Harvard College.
[1] The earl of Rochester procured for him, apparently with the sole object of annoying Dryden by infringing on his rights as poet-laureate, a commission to supply a masque for performance at court.
Crowne was a fertile writer of plays with an historical setting, in which heroic love was, in the fashion of the French romances, made the leading motive.