List of colonial governors of New York
# Governor Took office Left office Notes
1 Richard Nicolls ( 1624-1672 ) 1664 1668 as military governor
2 Francis Lovelace ( 1621-1675 ) 1668 1673
3 Anthony Colve 1673 1674 Dutch naval captain under restored Netherlands rule
4 Edmund Andros ( 1637-1714 ) 1674 1683
5 Anthony Brockholls ( c. 1656 ) 1681 1683 Commander-in-Chief of British Forces and acting governor
6 Thomas Dongan , 2nd Earl of Limerick ( 1634-1715 ) 1683 1688
7 Francis Nicholson ( 1655-1728 ) 1688 1691 military governor and de facto only until June 1689
8 Jacob Leisler ( c. 1640-1691 ) 1688 1691 Militia officer in rebellion
9 Henry Sloughter ( d. 1691 ) 1691 1691
10 Richard Ingoldesby ( d. 1719 ) 1691 1692 Military officer as acting governor
11 Benjamin Fletcher ( 1640-1703 ) 1692 1697
12 Richard Coote , 1st Earl of Bellomont ( c. 1636-1700/1 ) 1698 1700/1
13 John Nanfan ( 1688-1702 ) 1701 1702 as acting governor
14 Edward Hyde , 3rd Earl of Clarendon ( 1661-1723 ) 1702 1708
15 John Lovelace , 4th Baron Lovelace ( 1672-1709 ) 1708 1709
16 Pieter Schuyler ( 1657-1724 ) 1709 1709 as acting governor
17 Richard Ingoldesby ( d. 1719 ) 1709 1709 as acting governor
18 Gerardus Beekman ( 1653-1723 ) 1709 1710 as acting governor
19 Robert Hunter ( 1664-1734 ) 1710 1719
20 Pieter Schuyler ( 1657-1724 ) 1719 1720 as acting governor
Under British control ( 1664–1783 )
Apart from a short period between May 1688 and April 1689 , during which New York was part of the Dominion of New England , the territory was known in this period as the Province of New York .
The territory which would later become the state of New York was settled by European colonists as part of the New Netherland colony (parts of present-day New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware) under the command of the Dutch West India Company in the Seventeenth Century. These colonists were largely of Dutch, Flemish, Walloon, and German stock, but the colony soon became a melting pot. In 1664, at the onset of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, English forces under Richard Nicolls ousted the Dutch from control of New Netherland, and the territory became part of several different English colonies. Despite one brief year when the Dutch retook the colony (1673-1674), New York would remain an English and later British possession until the American colonies declared independence in 1776. With the unification of the two proprietary colonies of East Jersey and West Jersey in 1702, the provinces of New York and the neighboring colony New Jersey shared a royal governor. This arrangement began with the appointment of Queen Anne's cousin, Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury as Royal Governor of New York and New Jersey in 1702, and ended when New Jersey was granted its own royal governor in 1738.