entered the royal service and was made justiciary of the Jews. In 1250, when he is styled ‘clericus et consiliarius regis,’ he took the cross, but did not go on the crusade. At Michaelmas next year Lovel was accused of taking bribes from Jews and others. He was disgraced and removed from his office, but eventually, on the payment of a fine of a thousand marks, and owing to the good services of John Mansel [q. v.] and Alexander III of Scotland, he recovered the royal favour, though not his office. On 27 Aug. 1252 Lovel was made treasurer by Mansel's advice (ib. v. 320; Madox, Exchequer, ii. 35, note c.) In 1255 he was justice itinerant at Stafford, in which capacity he acted with much harshness (cf. ‘Burton Annals’ in Ann. Mon. i. 357–9). In 1257 Henry III asked the monks of Coventry to elect Lovel as their bishop, but they refused. Lovel incurred much unpopularity as a royal officer during these years; he was nevertheless continued in his office after the parliament of Oxford in June 1258. A little later he was accused of taking undue advantage of his position in relation to the royal forests. He was consequently removed from office by the barons on 18 Oct., and was for a time imprisoned. After his release he retired to his rectory of Hameslepe or Hamestable. He also held the prebend of Cadington Major in St. Paul's Cathedral (Le Neve, Fasti, ii. 369). He died at Hamestable on 27 Dec. 1259, it was said through vexation at the king's refusal of reconciliation with him; Henry was probably not a free agent. Lovel had been sentenced to pay a heavy fine, and on his death his estates were seized. Before becoming a clerk Lovel had married the widow of Alexander de Arsic, by whom he had two sons: John, whose only daughter and heiress married Thomas de Botetourt, and Henry, a priest. The Dunstable annalist records that his convent made a settlement with Lovel and his son Henry as to certain tithes in 1254 (Ann. Mon. iii. 191). From Lovel's elder brother John were descended the Lovells, barons of Tichmarsh, and Francis, viscount Lovell [q. v.] Matthew Paris calls him ‘vafer et circumspectus.’
[Matt. Paris and Annales Monastici, in Rolls Series; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 558; Burke's Dormant and Extinct Peerages, p. 332.]
LOVELACE, FRANCIS (1618?–1675?), governor of New York, second son of Richard, first baron Lovelace, by his second wife, Margaret, only daughter and heiress of William Dodsworth of London, was born at Hurley, Berkshire, about 1618. Like his brother, John, second baron, he was a devoted royalist, and attended Charles II during his travels (Clarendon Corresp. passim; cf. Thurloe State Papers, ed. Birch, vi. 151). In May 1650 he obtained a license from the council of state to pass with six servants to Long Island on his way to Virginia; and two years later he was selected by the governor to convey to the king an account of the surrender of the colony to the parliamentary commissioners (Cal. State Papers, Colonial, 1574–1660, pp. 339, 376, 379). After the Restoration he appears to have attached himself to the Duke of York, and owing to his influence was either in 1664 or 1665 appointed deputy-governor of Long Island (State Papers, Dom. 1665, p. 148), and in 1667 lieutenant-colonel of one of the regiments raised in that year, his colonel being Sir Walter Vane (ib. 1667, p. 181). In 1668 he succeeded Colonel Richard Nicholls or Nicholas as governor of New York and New Jersey. His task as governor was to bring the preponderant Dutch population quietly but surely under the newly established English authority. Lovelace adopted a paternal policy. He established toleration in religious matters, bought lands of the red men, and started a regular post between New York and Boston. The prosperity of his capital was measured by its possession of four hundred houses. On the other hand, he resisted all demands for popular representation, decreed a severe tax for defensive purposes, and ordered to be burnt the protest which the Long Island towns preferred against it; so that when a hostile Dutch fleet, under Admiral Eversen, anchored off Fort James in July 1673, the inhabitants showed themselves indifferent or inclined to fraternise with the Dutch. Lovelace, who was absent at Newhaven at the moment, hurried back to find that his lieutenants had struck their flag, and that New Netherlands was again the name of the colony, while the city had become New Orange. He made his way to Long Island, where he was arrested, ostensibly on account of a debt owing to the Duke of York, and sent back to England (30 July 1673). On 2 March 1674 he was examined at the Cockpit respecting the surrender of the city; his answers were found unsatisfactory, and he was re-examined on 9 March; it is not known with what result (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. vii. 47, 117). He is said to have died shortly afterwards. New York was restored to the English in October 1674. By his wife, Mary, daughter of William King, ‘a person much below his quality and condition, whom he was inveighled to marry without the privity of his relations’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. App. p. 144), he had
