Sir Edmund Plowden (1590 – July 1659 in Lydbury North, Shropshire, England) also titled Lord Earl Palatinate, Governor and Captain-General of the Province of New Albion in North America was an explorer and colonial governor who attempted to colonize North America in the mid-seventeenth century under a grant for a colony to be named New Albion. This attempt, fraught with mutiny, legal woes, lack of funds, and bad timing and compromised by Plowden's ill-temper, was a failure, and Plowden returned to England in 1649.