Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, hero of the Glorious Revolution and first cousin of Queen Anne, served as the colonial governor of New York from 1701 to 1708. How did he do? Well, let’s look at the judgment of posterity…

I hope some abler hand has done this Province & my Lord Cornbury as much justice as to lay before you an administration so where exactly parallel’d as in that of Gessius Florus, Governor of Judea, and has told you that her Majesties revenue here is nigh expiring and will certainly fall, if some elce been sent in my Lords stead.

contemporary politician Lewis Morris

…[a man] of vicious character and broken fortune, sent by a Minister to get him out of a way…

Benjamin Franklin

…[a man] of abilities so slender as almost to verge on intellectual imbecility… [with] loose principles and violent temper…

historian, poet, and politician Thomas Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

…half-witted… Lord Cornbury, whose merits in being the proto-deserter from her father required some gratitude, was sent to play his imbecile pranks as the governor of the invaluable colonies James II had founded in North America… It is said, and with great probability, that the follies of this ruler laid the foundation of that system of evil colonial government which deprived Great Britain finally of one of the brightest gems in her crown!

historian and poet Agnes Strickland

…a mean liar, a vulgar profligate, a frivolous spendthrift, an impudent cheat, a fraudulent bankrupt, and a detestable bigot…

historian and diplomat John Romeyn Brodhead

Lord Cornbury, destitute of the virtues of the aristocracy, illustrated the worst form of its arrogance, joined to intellectual imbecility. Of the sagacity of the common mind, of its firmness, he knew nothing; of political power he had no conception, except as it emanates from the self-will of a superior; to him popular rights existed only as a condescension.

historian George Bancroft

…a reckless adventurer, profligate and unprincipled, who had fled from England to escape the demands of his creditors, and whose sole claim to this important command rested on his kindred to royalty…

historian Mary Louise Booth

Careful inquiry into the course of Cornbury’s administration… on the whole substantiates the legend which portrays him as a spendthrift, a grafter, a bigoted oppressor, and a drunken, vain fool.

historian Charles Worthen Spencer

…a degenerate and pervert, who is said to have spent half of his time dressed in women’s clothes, [and who] was one of the most despicable of the colonial governors.

historian William Wilson Manross

We never had a governor so universally detested, nor one who so richly deserved the public abhorrence.

historian William Smith Jr.

Yikes.

What the heck could one man do that was so terrible and beyond the pale that he became the most hated man in New York, so “universally detested” that historians were still lining up to dunk on him three hundred years later?

Let’s find out.

Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury

First, let’s establish some background you’ll need to make sense of everything.

It is 1658 and Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, is dead. His son Richard takes his place, but proves to be a weak and indecisive leader. It’s not long before his political opponents seize control of the New Model Army, occupy London, force Richard to step down, and restore Parliament.

A few months later Parliament reaches out to the Stuarts living in exile and ask them to return as heads of state. On May 29, 1660 Charles II returns to London to enormous acclaim.

At roughly the same time James Stuart, the Duke of York, marries one Anne Hyde. Almost everyone in England thought this was a terrible idea, a waste of a perfectly good Crown Prince who should have been affianced to some foreign royal to shore up an alliance, or to some rich lord’s daughter to shore up the Crown’s finances. Anne had nothing going on in those departments. She wasn’t even all that good-looking. But James had knocked her up and was determined to make an honest woman of her.

James and Anne would remain married until her unfortunate death eleven years later. Their union produced numerous children, only two of which survived to adulthood: the Princesses Mary and Anne.

The marriage was good for one person: Anne’s father, Edward Hyde. Edward had already received Charles II’s favor for his loyalty and for his role in the negotiations which returned the Stuarts to power. He had been already been appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer and created Viscount Cornbury and Earl of Clarendon. Now he received additional prestige and patronage as a royal father-in-law.

On November 28, 1661 the Earl of Clarendon’s oldest son, Henry Hyde, was blessed with a son, who he named Edward after his father. He’s the protagonist of our story.

Edward Hyde was raised at the Hyde family estate, Cornbury Park, in Oxfordshire. As a teenager he was sent off to Geneva to study at the Académie de Calvin, where young European gentlemen received a broad liberal arts education. He was apparently one of their prize pupils, because for two years running he was chosen to be the “king” of the arquebus drill during the city’s Exercise de l’Arc festival.

In 1682, Edward graduated from the Académie and toured Europe. In Paris he was presented to King Louis XIV. He received a much frostier reception in the Netherlands when he dropped in on his cousin the Princess Mary. Mary’s husband, Prince William of Orange, often butted heads with the other Stuart men, who suspected he was trying to usurp their authority. (Because he was.) There wasn’t much he could do to Charles and James, but he could vent his frustrations on poor little Edward Hyde. Edward was refused lodgings in the palace, and William refused to look at or speak to him for the duration of the visit. Edward was so embarrassed he reportedly broke out into tears.

Edward finally made it back to England in 1683, where he received the title of Lord Cornbury and a commission in the Royal Regiment of Dragoons. He spent the next several years fighting overseas, including a memorable stint defending Austria from the vile Turk.

In 1685 Charles II died without a legitimate male heir. That meant his younger brother was now James II of England and James VII of Scotland.

Now James had recently converted to Catholicism, which the English were not terribly happy about. James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth, openly rebelled against the new king and raised an anti-Catholic army. The Royal Dragoons were recalled to put down the rebellion. It all came to a head on July 6 at the Battle of Sedgemoor. Cornbury and his squadron helped turn the tide by capturing a rebel artillery position, and that was that. He was rewarded with a promotion to colonel, and then being made a commanding officer of the dragoons.

Fresh from that triumph, Cornbury entered politics and was elected to the House of Commons as the representative from Wiltshire. He was also made Master of the Horse for Prince George of Denmark, husband to the Princess Anne.

It might seem like Cornbury had the world in his grasp, but in reality he was barely making ends meet. As close relations to the King and the Princesses Royal, the Hydes felt like they had to keep up appearances and spent lavishly to do so. It was money they didn’t have, and over the years they became increasingly dependent on James II’s patronage to shore up their shaky finances.

Henry Hyde, now the second Earl of Clarendon, tried to fix his financial problems the old-fashioned way: by marrying off his son to a woman of means. He paraded numerous landowner’s daughters and wealthy widows before Cornbury, who showed not the slightest interest in any of them.

Instead, Cornbury chose to elope with a love match: Kathleen O’Brien, the Baroness Clifton. Lord Clarendon was furious, because she was deeply in debt. No matter, though. Love conquers all. Except maybe money.

The Glorious Revolution

On June 10, 1688 James II’s second wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

The English had almost come to uneasy terms with James’s Catholicism, writing it off as a curious personal peccadillo. Now, with a male heir to the throne, they were faced with the prospect of a Catholic ruling dynasty delivering Protestant England into the sinister hands of Pope Clement IX.

It was all too much to bear.

Parliament reached out to the next Protestants in the line of succession — James’ oldest daughter Princess Mary and her husband, William of Orange — and begged them to come seize the throne. William and his armies landed in Torbay on November 5 and began cautiously moving towards London, waiting to see if the popular support Parliament had promised would materialize.

James was caught off guard, and had to scramble to raise an army. Meanwhile, he activated the nearest available forces and ordered them to slow William’s advance. By coincidence, that regiment of Royal Dragoons stationed in Salisbury was commanded by one Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury.

For a week Cornbury battled his cousins on behalf of his uncle… and then, on November 14, he suddenly switched sides.

It was not a significant defection in military terms; Cornbury did not control vast territories or large numbers of troops. In morale terms, it was a devastating blow. There were few people as well-connected to the regime as Cornbury: he was the king’s nephew, first cousin to the Princesses Mary and Anne, Prince George’s Master of the Horse; and son of the Earl of Clarendon (who also happened to be the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal). He was the first noble of any significance to defect.

When James II learned of his nephew’s betrayal he chugged a bottle of wine, silently left the dinner table, and went to bed angry and dyspeptic. Meanwhile, the Earl of Clarendon tore at his breast and wailed, “O God, that my son should be a rebel!” Other royals, like the Princess Anne, correctly foresaw that Cornbury’s betrayal would be the first of many. They hoped that the defections would force James to come to his senses and reach some sort of accommodation with Parliament.

They were deluding themselves. It was not in James’ nature to compromise.

It was, though, in his nature to quit. On December 23 he exiled himself to France, handing the throne of England to King William III and Queen Mary II.

Backing the winning side should have been good for Cornbury, but it turns out King William just didn’t like him. (The fact that his father remained an unreconstructed Jacobite didn’t help either.) He was removed from command of the Royal Dragoons and later dismissed as Prince George’s Master of the Horse.

As a result, Cornbury had no income (at the time members of Parliament were not paid), but still had to deal with his large personal expenses and the debts that had accrued to his wife’s estates. By 1697 he was whining that he had “not a shilling to help myself with, nor to get dinner for my Wife and myself.”

He was reduced to begging his father for financial assistance. The second Earl of Clarendon was not terribly disposed to help the son who had helped depose his beloved James II. He also didn’t have the money, either. He had been living large and counting on the king to help cover his debts. Whoops.

In the end it was William who came to Cornbury’s rescue, granting him a small stipend of £10/week. William may not have liked his cousin, but he was still a cousin. And maybe he was getting soft in his old age, especially after the death of his wife.

Governor of New York

That would certainly explain why when Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont and Governor of New York, died unexpectedly in the spring of 1701, King William appointed Lord Cornbury to be his successor.

Later historians would claim that Cornbury had been appointed to the position by Queen Anne as a way to enrich her favorite cousin, an unqualified oaf. who was being “hunted out of England by a host of hungry creditors.” This is wrong on several counts.

• First, as we’ve seen, Cornbury was appointed by King William not Queen Anne. And while Cornbury may have been one of Anne’s favorites, William seems to have been indifferent to him at best.
• Whether or not the position was meant to enrich Cornbury is a matter of debate. Extracting some degree of profit from an appointed position would have been expected at the time, and not seen as graft or corruption unless it was excessive.
• He certainly wasn’t unqualified. If nothing else his military experience would be needed in a recently conquered colony constantly threatened by the Dutch, the French, and the Haudenosaunee.
• As for the debts… Well, there’s no denying his personal finances were not great, but Cornbury’s largest debts had been incurred as a direct result of his new position. New governors were expected to provide uniforms for the soldiers under their command. Cornbury didn’t have the money on hand and purchased on credit but the mercers immediately had him arrested, presumably so he couldn’t escape the debt by going abroad. In the end the King had to step in and square accounts to make sure his new governor could catch his boat. (The irony is that when Cornbury arrived in New York the uniforms turned out to be shoddy, so he had the mercers prosecuted by the Board of Trade. Revenge is sweet.)

Cornbury set out from Spithead on November 5, 1701. Travel being what it was at the time, it took him a month just to reach Falmouth and he did not actually set out across the Atlantic until March 13 of the following year. By that time William III had been dead for five days and Anne had been proclaimed queen. (Though she had yet to be coronated.)

He arrived in New York on May 3, 1702 and got right to work. Well, sort of.

Cornbury found himself in the middle of a three-way struggle between the Board of Trade, the Treasury, and the armed forces; each of whom thought they were the ones in charge. As Governor, Cornbury theoretically represented the Board of Trade, and on paper he was commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Of course the Treasury controlled all the money, making it virtually impossible to do anything without their cooperation. All three groups had incompatible needs and goals.

Then there were the locals. At the time the colony was still divided between the Dutch (who were all for fellow countryman William III but wanted more local government) and the English (who were more aristocratic and trying to stamp out the remnants of Dutch power). At the time the Dutch outnumbered the English, who were dead set against giving them any say in local government.

And then there was religion. The new governor had been given explicit instructions to let the colonists worship as they pleased, and also orders to convert as many to Anglicanism as possible.

The real problem was that there was no action that Cornbury could take which wouldn’t anger the majority of his constituents. Previous governors had tried to navigate this minefield and failed. As a result New York had gone through ten of them in the previous twenty years and the colony was a hot mess.

Lord Cornbury was determined to change all that, and fortunately the various factions decided to give the new guy an honest chance before tearing him down.

The people welcomed him with open arms, with the colonial assembly voting him a special (and extravagant) allowance of £2000 to defray the cost of his ocean voyage. Then they threw a huge banquet to honor the new governor, where he was presented “the freedom of the city” in a golden box. (As an American this confused the heck out of me, but it’s basically just getting the key to the city.)

In early June another ship arrived from England with the official proclamation of Queen Anne’s ascension to the throne and confirmation of Cornbury’s appointment. Now he could get to work.

In July he rowed up to Albany to negotiate with the Haudenosaunee and establish peace along the frontier. While he was there, four slaves murdered a sachem, Minchique. Minichque’s family were insistent that there should be no vengeance, so Cornbury executed the leader and pardoned the other three. His Solomonic judgment so impressed the Haudenosaunee that they agreed to peace.

Throughout the summer he led the public health response to a plague (possibly yellow fever) which had struck Manhattan. Admittedly he did so from quite a distance away; he had relocated to Jamaica on Long Island, where a local Presbyterian minister had offered up his parsonage for the governor’s use.

To protect the city and its harbor from the odious French, he drew up plans to expand the fortifications on either side of the Narrows and beef up their naval batteries. The assembly agreed to raise £1500 through taxes to help fund the project, and other colonies were expected to kick in a small share as well.

Everything was running smoothly… but there was no way that could last.

His High Mightiness

During that first year Cornbury was dealing with problems that had clear, unambiguous solutions. Eventually he was going to have to make a decision that would piss someone off, and oh boy did he ever.

He started by antagonizing the entire colony of New Jersey.

By 1703 the proprietors of neighboring East and West Jersey had become unable to cope with the enormous financial costs of running their colonies, and relinquished the territory back to the Crown. Queen Anne consolidated the provinces into a single colony and made Lord Cornbury its first governor. The residents of New Jersey were not happy because they wanted their own governor. One specific resident, rich and influential lawyer Lewis Morris, was extra not happy because he had rather wanted to be that governor himself. He would eventually become one of the key architects of Cornbury’s downfall.

In 1704 Cornbury pushed an unpopular muster bill through New Jersey’s colonial assembly, by preventing several newly elected Quaker legislators from taking their seats before the vote. The bill was enormously unpopular, and the sheriffs flat-out refused to enforce it. When it came up again the following year not only did the assembly refuse to renew it, they presented Cornbury with an itemized list of complaints drafted by Morris. Then, just to twist the knife, they withheld the governor’s salary until those complaints were addressed.

When Cornbury refused to act on the assembly’s demands, they officially charged him with corruption, on the grounds that four years earlier he had accepted bribes and cash gifts. The problem was that the assembly didn’t have any evidence, only rumor, hearsay, and innuendo. They also could not articulate why they had waited for so long before acting. The charges were quietly dropped, but the accusations were loud and the retractions were quiet.

Cornbury could only splutter in indignation and accuse the assemblymen of treason. He might have done more, if he wasn’t also busy defending himself from charges of religious intolerance.

In 1704 Cornbury seized a public church in Jamaica (the one where he had stayed during the plague two years earlier, no less) and turned it over to the Anglicans. The Presbyterian congregation which met there was outraged, and the Reverend Hubbard bombarded the public with pamphlets and sermons decrying the governor as a bigot trying to punish religious dissent. Sounds good, except… Cornbury was in the right. The church had been built with public funds, which meant it was supposed to be nondenominational, but Hubbard had been whipping up violent mobs to assault other denominations attempting to use the building. Cornbury had only stepped after Hubbard had escalated things.

In 1707 Cornbury arrested Presbyterian minister Francis Makemie for the offense of preaching without a license. Makemie’s defense was that he had a license to preach in Virginia and assumed it was reciprocal in other colonies. Cornbury was, once again, correct on the merits as there was no case law that backed up Makemie’s assumption. Well, at least until he was acquitted after a jury trial. Cornbury gracefully acquiesced to the ruling but Hubbard and Makemie never let anyone forget his initial action.

Fighting Presbyterians, though, was at least preferable to fighting the Treasury.

In 1705 the colony received a new tax collector, Thomas Byerly. Byerly and the governor immediately butted heads, and Cornbury even fired the new tax collector only to have Parliament go over his head and reinstate him. Once Byerly was safe, he told his chief auditor George Clarke to go over the finances with a fine-toothed comb and to question everything. Eventually the Board of Trade and the Treasury began insisting on final approval of all expenditures, and even reasonable ones were denied. Cornbury wound up paying for a ton of things out of pocket, and groused that there was no point in having a governor if they were going to let accountants run the show.

These were followed by allegations that Cornbury had been making illegal land grants in exchange for cash. This, at least, appears to be true. Individual tracts were supposed to limited to 1000 acres or less, he made at least one grant of 800,000 acres and a second that was over 2,000,000 acres. (It is not true, though, that he made the land grant which later became Hyde Park — that had actually be granted way back in 1697, the estate wasn’t named until the 1800s, and the name appears to honor Hyde Park in London which has no relation to the Hyde family.)

The ultimate indignity came when the assembly accused Cornbury of embezzling the funds earmarked for improving the city’s defenses and using them to build a “pleasure house” on Governor’s Island (which was called Nutten Island back then). Cornbury was furious. He had built the house, but not with public funds if only because there were no public funds to embezzle. The assembly had only raised £398 of the £1500 they were supposed to raise, and matching funds from other colonies had never materialized. The assembly checked their records and had to issue a mea culpa, but once again the accusations were loud and the retractions were quiet.

Just be safe, though, they decided to follow New Jersey’s lead and refused to pay the governor’s salary until everything had been sorted out. Cornbury was forced to live on savings and credit for over two years.

While we’re talking about Fort Anne, let’s not forget about Cornbury’s jurisdictional spats with the military.

In July 1706 a British privateer sailed several captured French vessels into the harbor. An officer who had been captaining one of the prize ships had recently died leaving a vacancy to be filled. Cornbury picked a replacement. The Royal Navy picked a different replacement. Now, as governor of New York Cornbury was technically a Vice-Admiral and outranked every other naval officer present, but the Navy attempted an end run around his authority by ordering the ship at question back to sea before the matter could be resolved in the courts. A compromise was eventually reached, but not before Cornbury had to order Army officers to arrest Navy officers. It did not look good for anyone involved.

By 1707 New York, New Jersey, the Quakers, the Presbyterians, the Board of Trade, and the Treasury were all petitioning Queen Anne for Cornbury’s removal. The Navy was none too happy with him either.

Of course, mere complaints were never going to get the Queen’s attention. So Cornbury’s enemies took things to the next level: malicious gossip and character assassination. They stretched the truth until he seemed like one of history’s greatest ego monsters.

• It was rumored that Cornbury preferred to be addressed not as “Your Lordship” but as “His High Mightiness,” purportedly an antiquated Dutch title.
• They said he was a weirdo and a sex pest with an ear kink, who had interrupted his welcome banquet to read a poem about how beautiful his wife’s ears were and insisting everyone should come up and check them out. They also said he stopped people with comely ears on the street so he could give them a tug on the lobes.
• They said his extravagance was beyond reason, that he lived in a style greater than any European lord. They claimed the barge he took to Albany to visit the Haudenosaunee was more extravagant than Cleopatra’s pleasure barge. They accused him of using more than 300 lbs. of candles every month and paying double the market rate for them (apparently as part of some sort of kickback scheme). They said he drank like a fish, consuming over twenty pipes of Madeira over eighteen months at a cost of over £500.
• They also said he was a cheat who turned to unconventional schemes to raise money after the assemblies cut him off. Most notably, they claimed he would throw lavish balls at the governor’s mansion, then charge his guests admission when they showed up. Lady Cornbury was no better, and would apparently ransack the closets of the city’s wealthiest residents and help herself to anything she liked.

(This last rumor was especially cruel, because Lady Cornbury had actually died in August 1706, leaving her husband all alone in an increasingly hostile colony.)

It’s doubtful that Queen Anne believed any of this malicious gossip, but she still had a huge problem. While her cousin remained in office nothing could get done. The assemblies refused to pass budgets or bills and colonial affairs ground to a halt.

What was a Queen to do? Her royal cousin had to go. She removed Lord Cornbury from office and sent John, Lord Lovelace, Baron of Hurley to take his place.

Popular legend says that when Lord Lovelace arrived at Manhattan on December 18, 1708 Lord Cornbury had only £200 to his name and an astonishing £14,000 in debt. Consequently he was thrown into debtors’ prison and his possessions auctioned off by the sheriff. He rotted away for over a year until his father died and he inherited the title of Earl of Clarendon and a seat in the House of Lords, at which point he was free because peers had absolute immunity to civil actions.

Popular legend is full of crap. Cornbury did have significant debts, but only to the tune of £4,000, and he seems to have stuck around voluntarily to settle those debts and defend his good name. He does not appear to have spent time in prison, and in any case peers don’t have absolute immunity to civil actions.

His father had died, though, on October 31, 1709. Word did not reach New York until months later, and as soon as the new Earl of Clarendon heard he bid good riddance to the colonies and got on the first boat back to England.

Later Life & Legacy

Upon his return to England, Lord Cornbury — I’m going to continue to call him Lord Cornbury because all these shifting titles give me a headache — Lord Cornbury enjoyed Queen Anne’s favor. He was appointed to the Privy Counsel, named First Commissioner of the Admiralty, given lodgings in Somerset House, and awarded a pension of £2,000 a year.

As the Queen’s health began to decline, Cornbury was appointed envoy extraordinary to Prince George of Hanover. George was next in the line of succession, and Anne was worried her ambitious cousin would do to her what her brother-in-law had done to her father. Cornbury’s job was to communicate to the Prince that would never happen.

When Anne finally died in 1715, Prince George became King George I. He did some significant housecleaning and Lord Cornbury was out. He still had his seat in the House of Lords, but he never had a significant role in government again. I would say he enjoyed his retirement, except during this same period all his adult children predeceased him.

He died on March 31, 1723 and was interred in the Hyde family crypt at Westminster Abbey. His aunt, Lady Frances Keightly, wrote a moving obituary for her nephew…

Lay not his follies to his charge, but have mercy on his poor soul.

As time went on, Lord Cornbury became comfortably obscure. He was largely forgotten by the British save for his heroic turn in the Glorious Revolution, and utterly reviled by the Americans who exaggerated his awfulness with each successive generation.

It did not help that most of the sources American historians had to fall back on were written by Cornbury’s enemies and full of vicious satirical mockery if not outright character assassination. It did not help that as events became more distant timelines became tangled and events became blown out of proportion. An embattled and largely impotent executive became a nepo baby failson appointed by Queen Anne in a last ditch attempt to keep him out of prison, who then engaged in bribery and graft on a massive scale when he wasn’t yanking on women’s ears and instituting a cover charge for his wild ragers.

For all his legendary awfulness, Cornbury’s legacy seems insignificant. I can basically only think of two lasting outcomes from his term in office.

• The Treasury used his trumped-up financial scandals to assume an increased role in colonial affairs. They didn’t do a damn thing to curb corruption, mind you, but they tried.
• His heavy-handed muster bill so angered the people of New Jersey that they never quite got their act together militarily. In 1774 Governor William Franklin had to sheepishly tell the British that the colony had no real militia and no fortifications. So in that sense, I guess he made the American Revolution a lot easier for our side? Yay, maybe?

That’s about it.

I do feel a little sorry for Cornbury. He had an impossible job, with numerous constituencies which could never be simultaneously appeased. There was almost no one who could thread that needle, and it’s hard to get angry at him for not rising to the occasion.

That doesn’t mean he didn’t suck, though.

Long Robes of Both Gendres

Of course, the real question about Lord Cornbury is this: was he a transvestite?

If you’re wondering where this is coming from, well, think back to the beginning of the episode, because I stuck this in the opening without comment…

…a degenerate and pervert, who is said to have spent half of his time dressed in women’s clothes, [and who] was one of the most despicable of the colonial governors.

historian William Wilson Manross

…and now I’m going to comment the hell out of it.

As the legend goes, the first time Cornbury went to preside over New York’s colonial assembly he showed up wearing women’s clothing. And not just any old rags, but a fancy hooped gown with an elaborate headdress, jewels, and a fan. The legislators, unsurprisingly, asked what he was doing and he snorted…

You are all very stupid people not to see the propriety of it all. In this place, and on this occasion, I represent a woman, and in all respects I ought to represent her as faithfully as I can.

At first he only dressed up for sessions of the assembly, but eventually he just started dressing up whenever he felt like it, “parading the fort in the dress of a woman and carousing and revelling in the most shameless manner.” Some sources say he felt compelled to dress as a women for a month each year, and others say he did it for months on end.

Once, they say, he was even arrested while cavorting with a gaggle of prostitutes and tugging at their ears. They even say he showed up at his wife’s funeral in one of her own dresses, since she wouldn’t be needing them any more.

So, that’s the story. Is it true?

We’ve seen that tales of Cornbury’s awfulness appear to be based on misrepresentations, exaggerations, and total fabrications created by his political enemies. How about this one?

Here’s the evidence for:

• Several letters from Cornbury’s political enemies, including Robert Livingston and Lewis Morris, contain passing references to the governor and his habit of wearing women’s clothes. The most extensive contemporary account seems to come from Anglican preacher Elias Neau, who wrote: “My Lord Cornbury has and dos still make use of an unfortunate Custom of dressing himself in Women’s Cloaths and of exposing himself in that Garb upon the Ramparts to the view of the public; in that dress he draws a World of Spectators upon him and consequently as many Censures, especially for exposing himself in such a manner all the great Holy Days and even in an hour or two after going to the Communion.”
• Robert Hunter, one of Cornbury’s successors as governor of New York, also wrote “America’s first play” Androboros, a lampoon intended to make Hunter’s rivals look ridiculous. Lord Cornbury’s analogue in the play is Lord Oinoboros (“Wine-Drinker”), who does not actually appear on stage but is referred to by other characters as a “devotee to long robes of both gendres.”
• During the period when Cornbury was envoy extraordinary to Prince George, diplomat Baron von Bothmer wrote of rumors that while “in the Indies” Cornbury dressed as a woman to better represent Queen Anne.
• Decades after Cornbury’s death, Gilly Williams claimed that his father used to do business with Cornbury, who would sit by the window wearing women’s clothing the whole time. “He used to sit at the open window so dressed, to the great amusement of the neighbours. He employed always the most fashionable milliner, shoemaker, stymaker, etc.”
• A more extensive non-contemporary account was provided by historian Janet Livingston Montgomery, who in the late 1820s wrote down the stories of her grandmother Gertrude Van Cortland Beekman, who had lived in Manhattan during Cornbury’s administration, and which seems to be the ur-text from which most versions of the legend derive.

The problem is, this evidence is not even circumstantial. It’s all just hearsay.

• It’s hard to take the letters written by Cornbury’s enemies at face value, especially since they were engaged in active character assassination of him at the time. Neau’s is the most complete account and you will note he does not personally claim to have witnessed Cornbury’s behavior, nor does he name any witnesses who had, nor does he name specific dates and times.
• Also, these claims were almost always made in private correspondence and never in public. That makes them seem more like gossip than actual historical fact.
• Likewise, it’s hard to extrapolate real-life behavior from a fictional depiction of a person. Several characters in Androboros wind up in drag over the course of the play, but only Cornbury gets accused of being a transvestite in real life.
• Baron von Bothmer’s account and other similar statements are merely repeating rumors and innuendo, and are not reflective of personal experience. Other claims are even less reliable, as they post-date the alleged behavior by half a century or more.
• Gertrude Van Cortland Beekman was a small child during Cornbury’s term of office. The stories she told were not her own, but versions of ones that had been told to her by her mother. Janet Livingston Montgomery would not vouch for their historicity and explicitly warned readers not to trust them. Everyone just ignored that disclaimer because the gossip was so juicy.
• Beyond that, no English contemporary of Cornbury ever made note of his cross-dressing. Which would have been something extraordinary at the time, and definitely worth noting.

Historian Patricia Bonomi is the leading authority on Lord Cornbury and she does not think it likely that Cornbury was a transvestite. Her main argument is that if Cornbury had really been a cross-dresser to the extent claimed by legend, it would be so hard to cover up that there would be copious documentation.

It’s hard to argue with that.

Bonomi offers the following reasons why Cornbury’s enemies might have chosen this route:

• Emasculating or shaming a man by putting him in women’s clothing is a time-honored trope from myth and legend. It is entirely possible Cornbury’s enemies were just trying to make him look ludicrous.
• Or maybe they were making a political point through metaphor, drawing attention to the fact that Cornbury derived his political authority from a woman (and not a particularly strong one at that, even if she was the queen).
• Signifiers of what is masculine and feminine are often fluid. Until the mid twentieth-century it was not uncommon for boys and girls to wear gender-neutral clothes which often seem feminine to modern eyes. Pink used to be considered a strong masculine color. It might be that Cornbury’s fashion sense was too out there for less sophisticated Puritanical colonists.
• Or it might simply be that they were just trying to gin up outrage to attract the attention of the authorities in England. At the time it was not uncommon to charge your enemies with treason, corruption, licentiousness, and homosexuality. Transvestitism was an unusual charge but hardly beyond the pale.

Okay, you say, but what about the portrait?

Devil with a Blue Dress

All right then. Let’s talk about the portrait.

The New York Historical Society has a painting of what appears to be a man in a blue satin dress with ruffled sleeves, white gloves, and an elaborate cap holding a fan. It is widely believed to be a portrait of Lord Cornbury in drag. It even has a little plaque attached to the frame identifying the sitter as Cornbury. If you have been watching this episode on YouTube, that’s the painting in question staring at you from the right-hand side of the screen. (A similar painting hangs in the Dallas Museum of Art, but has been less exhaustively studied.)

The painting has been associated with Lord Cornbury since 1796. Horace Walpole (yes, that Horace Walpole) and Gilly Williams were visiting their friend, Sylvester Douglas, Baron Glenbervie, at his country estate. They were trading salacious stories when the topic of Lord Cornbury came up.

Walpole related a story he had heard about Cornbury opening the assembly while dressed as Queen Anne. Williams added the bit about his father doing business with Cornbury while he wore women’s clothes. But that’s not all. In his diary, Douglas wrote:

Mr. Williams has seen a picture of him at Sir Herbert Pakington’s in Worcestershire, in a gown, stays, tucker, long ruffles, cap, etc.

The painting in the NYHS has a clear provenance that can be traced back to Pakington’s collection. Scientific analysis of the painting confirms that it dates from the early Eighteenth Century.

It’s not clear, however, why the Pakingtons would have a picture of Lord Cornbury at all, much less a picture of Lord Cornbury in drag. They have no family connections to the Hydes. They were not the Hydes’ allies, nor were they enemies. By Walpole’s era Cornbury was long-dead and quite obscure, so there’s not even any potential notoriety from owning such a picture.

There’s some debate as to whether the sitter is even Lord Cornbury. Contemporary portraits of Cornbury almost certainly existed, but none have survived to the modern era. A few sketches and cameos exist, but do not appear to be contemporary and the claims that they depict Cornbury are uncertain at best.

Beyond that, there’s also the question as to whether the sitter is a man in a dress. Those who are inclined to believe it is a picture of Cornbury point out various proportions of the face and shoulders and even a supposed five o’clock shadow around the chin. There’s no reason, though, why it couldn’t be a portrait of a less-than-attractive but rich woman. Or even just a portrait of a normal woman butchered by a less-than-talented artist.

The likely explanation is that the portrait is not of Lord Cornbury at all, but a portrait of an unfortunately mannish woman made even more mannish by a second-rate artist.

But where’s the fun in that?

That, indeed, is the criticism leveled at Bonomi by scholars like Ralph J. Poole and Alan Taylor, who do not appreciate her attempt to knock the sensationalistic cruft of the Cornbury legend.

Poole’s argument is the weaker of the two, in that he basically argues that by making history “correct but less colorful” Bonomi and her ilk are also making it “less fun.” Which, okay, I get what he’s saying, but wouldn’t it be better to be entertaining and correct? If you had to choose only one wouldn’t it be better to be the latter?

Taylor has the same basic attitude but his argument is more nuanced. He essentially argues that knowledge of the past is imperfect, and that there are limits to what we can learn through documentary evidence. Bonomi’s historical records cannot prove a negative; they can show it is not likely that Cornbury was a cross-dresser but they cannot definitely prove that it didn’t happen. It’s a convincing line of argument, but frustrating in its implications. If you follow it to the logical endpoint you must conclude that it is impossible to actually know anything through documentary evidence, which raises the question of what the bloody point of history is anyway.

In the end, the question has to be what purpose the legendary version of Cornbury’s rule serves. It’s entertaining, to be sure, but its exaggerated version of reality tells us nothing useful about the political history or colonial administration of New York. If learning about those is your goal, jettisoning the legend makes perfect sense.

If you’re looking to unearth a historical LGBTQIA+ icon, the Cornbury legend is potentially tempting. Then again, the documentation of his cross-dressing is pretty weak and there’s no indication of queerness anywhere else in Cornbury’s life. Besides, do you really want America’s first drag queen to also be the worst governor in the history of New York? Probably not. Shantay, sashay away.

On the other hand, if your goal is to learn about the minds of colonial New Yorkers and New Jerseyans, the Cornbury legend is quite useful. It tells us that they were preoccupied with graft and corruption, or at the very least not getting their fair share of graft and corruption. It tells us they were concerned about conspicuous extravagance. It tells us that they were already chafing under rule by a distant empire indifferent to local interests.

And it also tells us that in their deepest darkest imagination, they could be nasty little freaks.