Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon
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Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon, also known by the courtesy title of Lord Cornbury (November 28, 1661 - March 31, 1723) was Governor of New York and New Jersey and perhaps best known for the claims of him cross-dressing while in office.
Born to Henry Hyde (1638-1709) and his wife Theodosia Capell (bp. 1642-1700), he spent his childhood at Swallowfield in Berkshire and matriculated at Oxford January 23, 1674/5. He entered the Royal Regiment of Dragoons, became a Tory Member of Parliament for Wiltshire from 1685-1687 and 1689-1696 and for Christchurch 1695-1701. He was Master of the Horse to Prince George of Denmark, and a Page of Honour to King James II at his Coronation. He was one of the first commanders to desert the King in 1688, taking with him as many troops as he could.
He became Governor of New York and New Jersey from 1701 to 1708, in which position he earned a very foul repute. It is said that his character and conduct were equally abhorred in both hemispheres. He was imprisoned for debt at the time of his father's death. He was Envoy Extraordinary to Hanover in 1714. On July 10, 1688, in a clandestine ceremony, he married Catherine, daughter of Henry O'Brien (styled Lord O'Brien) and his wife Catherine, in her own right Baroness Clifton of Leighton Bromswold. His wife- who on her mother's death in 1702 became Baroness Clifton of Leighton Bromswold, died in New York August 11, 1706 and is buried at Trinity Church, New York.
Lord Cornbury died at Chelsea, in obscurity and debt, and was buried April 5, 1723 in Westminster Abbey. By his daughter Theodosia, who married John Bligh, 1st Earl of Darnley, he is ancestor of many alive today, including actor Cary Elwes.
[edit] Reputation
Cornbury came to be regarded in the historical literature as a moral profligate, sunk in corruption: possibly the worst governor Britain ever imposed on an American colony. The early accounts claim he took bribes and plundered the public treasury. Nineteenth century historian George Bancroft said that Cornbury illustrated the worst form of the English aristocracy's "arrogance, joined to intellectual imbecility". Later historians characterize him as a "degenerate and pervert who is said to have spent half of his time dressed in women's clothes", a "fop and a wastrel". He is said to have delivered a "flowery panegyric on his wife's ears" after which he invited every gentleman present to feel precisely how shell-like they were; to have misappropriated £1500 meant for the defense of New York Harbor, and, scandalously, to have dressed in women's clothing and lurked "behind trees to pounce, shrieking with laughter, on his victims".[citation needed]
Patricia U. Bonimi, in her book The Lord Cornbury Scandal: The Politics of Reputation in British America re-examined these assertions, and states them to be questionable and based on very little evidence. Three colonials, all members of a faction opposed to Cornbury, wrote four letters between 1707 and 1709 discussing a rumor that Governor Cornbury wore women's clothes. There are also some early documents that might be cited to support charges of having taken bribes or misappropriated government funds, but there the contemporary evidence ends.
Some of the other tales (The ears business, and that Cornbury had vowed to wear women's clothes one month a year), were written fifty years after the supposed events had occurred, and some of the suppositions that were made to justify them (e.g. that he dressed as a woman because he was the Queen's representative) were likely wholly untrue.
Another frequently cited piece of evidence is that portrait claimed to be of Lord Cornbury dressed in women's clothes hangs today in the New York Historical Society. Almost nothing is known about the origins or subject of the picture.
[edit] New York Governor
In the interim after Cornbury's time as Governor of New York, there were several acting governors:
- John Lovelace, Baron Lovelace 1708-1709 as governor
- Peter Schuyler 1709 as acting governor {Also 1719-1720}
- Richard Ingoldsby 1709-1710 as acting governor
- Gerardus Beekman 1710 as acting governor
In 1710, General Robert Hunter arrived to fill the post.
| Preceded by: Henry Hyde |
Earl of Clarendon | Succeeded by: Henry Hyde |
| Preceded by: Earl of Bellomont |
Colonial Governor of New York 1702 — 1708 |
Succeeded by: General Robert Hunter |
