Queen Anne had a transvestite cousin, Lord Cornbury, whom she assigned to be governor of New York and New Jersey. The colonists were not amused.
Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon (28 November 1661 – 31 March 1723), styled Viscount Cornbury between 1674 and 1709, was Governor of New York and New Jersey between between 1701 and 1708, and is perhaps best known for the claims of him cross-dressing while while in office.
Cornbury was regarded as possibly the worst governor Britain ever imposed on an American colony, and came to be known as a 'degenerate', a 'pervert' a moral profligate, sunk in corruption in historical literature with claims that he took bribes and plundered the public treasury. He is said to have delivered a "flowery panegyric on his wife's ears" after which he invited every gentleman present to feel precisely how shell-like they were. He also is said to have, scandalously at the time, dressed in women's clothing and lurked "behind trees to pounce, shrieking with laughter, on his victims".
Cornbury is reported to have opened the 1702 New York Assembly clad in a hooped gown and an elaborate headdress and carrying a fan, imitative of the style of Queen Anne. When his choice of clothing was questioned, he replied, "You are all very stupid people not to see the propriety of it all. In this place and occasion, I represent a woman (the Queen), and in all respects I ought to represent her as faithfully as I can." It is also said that in August, 1707, when his wife Lady Cornbury died, His High Mightiness (as he preferred to be called) attended the funeral again dressed as a woman. It was shortly after this that mounting complaints from colonists prompted the Queen to remove Cornbury from office.
It is widely held that a portrait that hangs today in the New York Historical Society is of Lord Cornbury in dressed as a woman.
Info Source: Lord Cornbury Scandal: The Politics of Reputation in British America by Patricia U. Bonomi and Fall From Grace by Ross Shelley.
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