Robert Hunter (governor)

Robert Hunter

Portrait of Robert Hunter (portrait attributed to Sir Godfrey Kneller
Lieutenant Governor of Virginia
In office
1707 – Captured at sea by the French; never served
Monarch Anne
Preceded by Edmund Jenings, President of Council
Succeeded by Alexander Spotswood
3rd colonial governor of New Jersey
In office
June 1710 – 1720
Monarch
Preceded by Richard Ingoldesby (Lt. Governor)
Succeeded by Lewis Morris, President of Council
19th colonial governor of New York
In office
June 1710 – 1719
Monarch
Preceded by Richard Ingoldesby (Lt. Governor)
Succeeded by Pieter Schuyler, Acting Governor
Governor of Jamaica
In office
1728 – March 1734
Monarch George I
Preceded by John Ayscough, President of Council
Succeeded by John Ayscough, President of Council
Personal details
Born 1664
Edinburgh, Scotland
Died 31 March 1734
Jamaica, West Indies
Nationality Scottish
Occupation Military officer, Governor, Playwright
Religion Church of England

Robert Hunter (1664–1734) was a British military officer, colonial governor of New York and New Jersey from 1710 to 1720, and governor of Jamaica from 1727 to 1734.

Biography

Robert Hunter was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1666, grandson of the twentieth Laird of Hunterston in Ayrshire, being the son of lawyer James Hunter and his wife Margaret Spalding.

Hunter had been apprenticed to an apothecary before running away to join the British Army. He became an officer in 1689 who rose the become a general, and married a woman of high rank. He was a man of business whose first address to the New York Assembly was barely 300 words long. In it, he stated, "If honesty is the best policy, plainness must be the best oratory."

He was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Virginia in 1707, but was captured by a corsair on his way to Virginia, taken to France, and in 1709 exchanged for the French Bishop of Quebec. He was then appointed Governor of New York and sailed to America with 3,000 Palatine refugees as settlers in 1710. In 1715 he advocated the local minting of copper coins, but the king refused. Governor Hunter's philosophy was that "the true Interests of the People and Government are the same, I mean A Government of Laws. No other deserves the Name, and are never Separated or Separable but in Imagination by Men of Craft."[1]

Hunter was succeeded as Governor by Pieter Schuyler as acting governor from 1719 to 1720 and finally by William Burnet, whose post as Comptroller of Customs was given to Hunter in exchange. Hunter was then Governor of Jamaica from 1727 until his death on 31 March 1734.

He was a member of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May,1709.[2]

Playwriting

His play, Androboros, written in 1714, was the first known play to be written and published in the North American British Colonies.

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ "New Jersey Information Digitial Collections" (PDF). State of New Jersey. Retrieved 15 December 2013.
  2. ↑ "Library and Archive Catalogue". Royal Society. Retrieved 23 November 2010.

External links

Government offices
Preceded by
Edmund Jenings		 Governor of the Province of Virginia
1707–1709 		Succeeded by
1st Earl of Orkney
Preceded by
Richard Ingoldesby		 Governor of the Province of New Jersey
1710–1720 		Succeeded by
William Burnet
Preceded by
Gerardus Beekman (acting)		 Governor of the Province of New York
1710–1719 		Succeeded by
Pieter Schuyler (acting)
Preceded by
John Ayscough (acting)		 Governor of Jamaica
1728–1734 		Succeeded by
John Ayscough (acting)


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