Livesey fought as a soldier on the side of Parliament throughout the Civil War. In 1648 he was one of the ‘regicides’ who tried King Charles I and signed his death warrant. He became a Commissioner of the Admiralty about three months before Charles II’s Restoration in 1660 but soon afterwards fled abroad.

He is shown seated wearing three-quarter armour. On the table on the right are his close helmet, a gauntlet, a goblet and a very unusual pair of flintlock pistols, the butts in the form of a crocodile’s head whose open jaws enclose a seated lion. The painting, formerly in the collection of Lord St John of Bletsoe, was acquired without a frame in 1954 and only had one made when it was first displayed in the Museum's 'Sea of Faces' exhibition in 2001.