Henry Hyde, Viscount Cornbury

Who was Henry Hyde, Viscount Cornbury?

Henry Hyde, Viscount Cornbury, styled Viscount Hyde from 1711 until 1723 and Viscount Cornbury thereafter, also 5th Baron Hyde in his own right, was a British author and politician.

The only son of Henry Hyde, 4th Earl of Clarendon to survive to adulthood, Hyde was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, from which he received a DCL. He was an author of some talent, and both Swift and Pope praised his character.

A Tory like the rest of his family, Cornbury involved himself in a Jacobite intrigue in 1733. Walpole's Excise Scheme of 1733 provoked great political unrest, and Cornbury thought the time right for a French-sponsored invasion by the Old Pretender. He was able to persuade the comte de Chavigny, the French ambassador to Britain, and Chauvelin, the French Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to endorse an invasion of southern England, which, Cornbury claimed, would result in a Jacobite rising in the country and the overthrow of the Hanoverians. However, the scheme was quashed in the royal cabinet by Cardinal Fleury, and Chavigny, some of whose activities had come to the attention of the British government, was recalled. Thereafter, Cornbury avoided Jacobite politics and devoted himself to the cultivation of taste.