On Lord Cornbury Scandal the Politics of Reputation in British America

This is such a fun book, and Bonomi handles her subject matter really well. History has not been kind to Edward Hyde, the Lord Cornbury and governor of New York and New Jersey during the early eighteenth century. According to historians, he was not shy about financial corruption and he was even a cross dresser! In her introduction, Bonomi tells us that she had taken this view uncritically until she spent some time in British archives and found boxes of documents with much better assessments of his character and administration. Could earlier historians have been wrong?

As it turns out, yes. Until Bonomi’s book, almost no historian had critically analyzed the administration of Lord Cornbury. Instead, they were happy to rely on opposition publications and rumors that amounted to character assassination. Yet, Bonomi’s purpose here is not to vindicate Lord Cornbury—she is far less interested in the details of his administration, which can be left to future historians, than the politico-social milieu in which these rumors began to emerge.

What Bonomi uncovers is a rough-and-tumble world of political contestation that would make the United States of the 2010s-22 (at the time of writing) look tame. In truth, character assassination wasn’t such a big deal compared to other forms of opposition political activism, which included “assassination” without any descriptors. For instance, Bonomi tells us the story of Daniel Parke, who was the governor of the British West Indian Leeward Islands. In 1709, he was shot in the arm during a failed assassination attempt. Then, a year later, an opposition mob demanded he resign on the spot. When he refused, he “took a musket ball in the thigh.” Then, the mob “tore off his clo[thes], drag[g]ed him by the members [!!!] about his house, bruised his head, and broke his back with the butt end of th[eir] pieces.” As can be expected, Parke died.

As part of the story, Bonomi tells fascinating accounts of the origins of the rumors of Cornbury’s “transvestism” (not my terms), the evolution of what can best be described as tabloid rags after 1695 with the rise of Grub Street press.

While this is not a full re-evaluation of Cornbury’s tenure, it does a damned good job of illuminating the “dark side” of colonial North American and British politics. It’s a must-read for those interested in early eighteenth-century Anglo-America.