New York’s royal governors are largely forgotten, recalled largely in place names, such as Sir William Tryon (Fort Tryon Park) or Colonel Thomas Dongan (Dongan Hills). But an 18th-century portrait, painted by an unknown artist, has made one mildly notorious. “Edward Hyde, Viscount Cornbury” hangs in the New-York Historical Society on Central Park West. Cornbury is portrayed with a double chin, heavy jowls, sensual lips, and a suggestion of five o’clock shadow while wearing a woman’s elegant blue silk “gown, stays, tucker, long ruffles, cap, etc …”A label on the frame quotes Agnes Strickland’s “Lives of the Queens of England” (1847): “Among other apish tricks, Lord Cornbury … is said to have held his state levees at New York, and received the principal Colonists dressed up in complete female court costume.”

Cornbury was born in 1661. As his paternal aunt had been the first wife of King James II, their daughters, Cornbury’s cousins, were future queens Mary II and Anne. Educated at Oxford and Geneva, Cornbury entered parliament and the army. In 1688 King James II (Cornbury’s uncle) was overthrown by his daughter Mary (Cornbury’s cousin) and her husband, who became King William III. Cornbury supported William and Mary. In 1701, William appointed Cornbury governor of New York. Shortly thereafter, William’s successor, Queen Anne (yet another Cornbury cousin), also appointed Cornbury governor of New Jersey.

The latter appointment created an implacable enemy for the new governor. Lewis Morris, Lord of the Manor of Morrisania (now in the Bronx), had long schemed to become governor of New Jersey. Queen Anne having thwarted his ambition, Morris began plotting against Cornbury.

Cornbury envisioned fortifying New York harbor, only to find that, as his term continued, relations with the provincial Assemblies became increasingly difficult. The assemblies saw defense as an Imperial responsibility and refused to raise local taxes to pay for it. Amid these controversies, Cornbury spent 100 pounds to build a small summerhouse on what is now Governor’s Island, off the Battery. The Morrisites falsely claimed Cornbury had misappropriated harbor defense money to build a mansion.

At that time preachers were required to obtain a license before preaching to public assemblies. While Cornbury licensed all applicants, he enforced the law against the unlicensed. When Francis Makemie, a Presbyterian minister, was prosecuted for defying the law, Cornbury’s enemies denounced it as tyranny.

In 1706, the Morrisite-controlled New Jersey Assembly stopped paying Cornbury’s salary. This forced Cornbury to incur personal debt for public expenses, to be reimbursed by submitting warrants to the provincial treasury for repayment. New York’s treasurer began delaying payment of his salary and warrants. When Cornbury was relieved of office in 1708, local creditors had him arrested for debt. This was not unprecedented: Cornbury’s predecessor, too, had been arrested after soldiers sued him for back pay.

Cornbury was soon released and returned to London. Queen Anne, addressing him as “entirely beloved,” granted him a residence, pension, and numerous public offices. In 1723 the press reported his death and interment in Westminster Abbey without comment on his character or reputation.

But in 1796 novelist Horace Walpole was trading old gossip while visiting a country house. He insisted Cornbury had opened a provincial Assembly session dressed as a woman. Another guest described a portrait of Cornbury dressed as a woman, which clearly seems to be the one now at the Historical Society. The earliest document linking Cornbury to this portrait was written in the same year: a letter alleging that Sir Herbert Packington owned a portrait of “[Cornbury] in Women’s cloaths.”

According to Patricia Bonomi’s 1995 book “The Lord Cornbury Scandal,” however, the only evidence of Cornbury’s alleged transvestism during his lifetime were four private letters written by three political opponents – Morris, Robert Livingston, and Elias Neau – between 1706 and 1708. None claimed to have witnessed Cornbury’s cross-dressing, and none named a witness. Noting that charges of sexual misconduct and perversion were commonplace in 18th-century British politics, Ms. Bonomi observed, first, that no contemporary journalist or pamphleteer even hinted that Cornbury was a transvestite; and, second, that no one recorded the existence of Cornbury’s purported portrait dressed as a woman until some 73 years after his death.

Cornbury’s unfounded reputation indicts historians of colonial New York for laziness. Neither George Bancroft nor Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, examined original sources before writing about Cornbury – the sort of thing historians should do. Before Ms. Bonomi, no one had questioned the portrait’s identity or the reality of the accusations. Perhaps there is only scandal rather than substance – if one considers cross-dressing grounds for scandal at all. After all, when Rudy Giuliani was mayor, he dressed publicly in women’s clothes two or three times a year.

The Historical Society has placed this placard by the portrait: “Recent research done on the painting has called the identity of the sitter into question.”