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.
IV. The Governor and His Enemies
Given all this popularity and good will on his arrival, what was it that went wrong? How did William Cosby’s become “one of the most disturbed administrations in New York Colonial history”? The transition was very rapid. Within three months of his arrival the new Governor wrote to the Duke of Newcastle:
I am sorry to inform your Grace that the example and spirit of the Boston people begin to spread amongst these colonies in a most prodigious manner. I had more trouble to manage these people than I could have imagined; however for this time I have done pretty well with them; I wish I may come off as well with them of the Jersies.[2]
That old bugbear of Colonial governors, trouble with the Assembly, was not in question. Unlike many men better than himself, Cosby got along very well with his legislature, his differences with it being hardly more than the inevitable friction created by two forces in contact and working toward ends that did not always coincide. The harmony was striking because he insulted the Assembly after it had voted him a present for his opposition to the sugar bill: the sum did not satisfy him, and he snarled to Lewis Morris, “Damn them, why did they not add shillings and pence? Do they think that I came from England for money? I’ll make them know better.”[3]