If you look into Burke’s _Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland_,
you will find the following paragraph embedded in the genealogical
history of “Cosby of Stradbally”:
William, brigadier-general, col. of the royal Irish, governor of New
York and the Jersies, equerry to the Queen, and m. Grace, sister of
George Montague Earl of Halifax, K.B., and left by that lady (who d.
25 Dec. 1767) at his decease, 10 March 1736, the following issue,
William, an officer in the Army; Henry, R.N., d. 1753; Elizabeth, m.
to Lord Augustus Fitzroy, 2nd son of Charles, Duke of Grafton; Anne,
m. to —— Murray, Esq. of New York.
The entry enables us to form a pretty good idea of the background from
which Governor Cosby came and explains much of his behavior as chief
executive of New York. He was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, sprung from the
notorious Ascendancy class that maintained its position through a whole
series of penal laws designed to keep the majority of Irishmen in
subjection. He had all the craving for place and pension, the
haughtiness, and the venal devotion to the _status quo_ that were common
in the worst section of his class, and these vices merely perverted a
strong will and a certain resourcefulness in meeting obstacles.
With intelligence and decency William Cosby might have been a man of
fair ability; instead he became a sycophant with his superiors, an
intriguer with his equals, and a petty tyrant with those beneath him. We
know from his correspondence that he could not abide opposition or even
criticism.
How much of a soldier he was remains doubtful since, although he rose to
the rank of general, it was a period in which office frequently enough
went with bribery, conniving, and influence rather than with ability.
William Cosby was in a position to resort to all of these because he
enjoyed powerful contacts in England, being a close friend of the Duke
of Newcastle, while his wife was a sister of the Earl of Halifax. These
noblemen may both have been instrumental in furthering his rise in the
army. His administrative career in the Colonies was certainly largely
due to Newcastle, who controlled the Board of Trade and was able to send
out whom he chose.
Cosby’s first governorship took him to the island of Minorca, where his
high-handedness and cupidity exasperated the Minorcans, and they
protested repeatedly to the Board of Trade. He committed one crime that
London could not overlook or minimize: while England and Spain were at
peace in 1718 Cosby ruthlessly seized the goods of a Spanish merchant,
ordered them sold at auction, and then manipulated the records to cover
his tracks. The whole thing was too flagrant. The Governor was ordered
to reimburse his victim and removed from his post in Minorca.
Notwithstanding the incident, Cosby was able to wangle other
appointments, of which the New York governorship was the most important.
The feeling of the Colonials when they learned of the Minorca affair was
expressed by Cadwallader Colden:
How such a man, after such a flagrant instance of tyranny and robbery,
came to be intrusted with the government of an English colony and to
be made Chancellor and keeper of the King’s conscience in that colony,
is not easy for a common understanding to conceive without
entertaining thoughts much to the disadvantage of the honor and
integrity of the King’s Ministers, otherwise than by thinking that the
Ministry believed that what he had suffered by the complaints made
against him from Minorca would make him for the future carefully avoid
giving any occasion of complaint from his new government.[1]
However, there was no local prejudice against the new Governor when he
arrived on August 1, 1732. His Minorca past was unknown. He had had the
shrewdness to ingratiate himself with New Yorkers, while he lingered in
England for over a year, by agitating against the pending sugar bill as
detrimental to Colonial commercial interests; he was unable to bring
news of success with him, but at least he was believed to have tried,
and this alone would have created an atmosphere favorable to him. He
had, moreover, personal attributes calculated to make him popular in
Colonial society—a smooth charm, good birth, high military rank,
familiar connections with the nobility at home, and a wife who was the
sister of an earl. He was fond of playing the host on a lavish scale,
and the parties and dances at the Governor’s mansion were soon noted as
among the gayest ever seen in New York City.