[Illustration:  Fort George in 1740.]

CHAPTER XIII

Lord Cornbury makes himself very unpopular

It was in the year that Princess Anne became Queen of England (1702) that Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, eldest son of the Earl of Clarendon, was sent to govern New York.  He was a cousin of the Queen, and left England to escape the demands of those to whom he owed money.

When Lord Cornbury arrived in New York, the Mayor, with much ceremony, presented him with a box of gold, containing the freedom of the city, which gave to him every privilege.  It was a great deal of trouble and expense to go to, for the Governor would have taken all the privileges, even if the Mayor had not gone through the form of giving them.

Governor Cornbury very soon let his new subjects see that he was eager to acquire wealth, and that he intended to get it without the slightest regard for their interests or desires.

The Queen had told him that he should do all in his power to make the Church of England the established church of the land; that he should build new churches, punish drunkenness, swearing, and all such vices, and that he should keep the colony supplied with negro slaves.

There was much sickness in the town—­so much that it became epidemic.  So the Governor and his council went to the little village of Jamaica, on Long Island, and carried on the business of the city in a Presbyterian church building.  When the epidemic had passed, he gave the church to the Episcopalians, because he remembered that Queen Anne had told him to make the Church of England the established church.  There were riotous times in Jamaica after that, but the Episcopal clergyman occupied the house, and the Episcopalians worshipped in the church regardless of all protests.

Not many improvements were made during Lord Cornbury’s administration.  He cared little for the good of the city or for anything else except his own pleasures.  The constant fear of war gave the people little time to think of improvements.  They did, however, pave Broadway from Trinity Church to the Bowling Green.  But do not imagine that this pavement was anything like those of to-day.  It was of cobble-stones, and the gutters ran through the middle of the street.

The Governor came to be detested more and more by the people, for as the years went by he spent their money recklessly.  He had a habit of walking about the fort in the dress of a woman, and another habit of giving dinners to his friends that lasted well on toward morning, when the guests sang and shouted so boisterously that the quiet citizens of the little town could not sleep.

So when the people grew very, very tired of it, they sent word to Queen Anne that her kinsman was a very bad Governor.  And she, after much hesitation, when he had been Governor six years, removed him from office.  She no sooner did this, than those to whom he owed money, and there were a great many of them, had him put in the debtors’ prison, in the upper story of the City Hall in Wall Street.  And in jail he remained for several months, until his father, the Earl of Clarendon, died, and money was sent for the release of the debtor prisoner, who was now a peer of Great Britain.