Lieutenant-General Edward Cornwallis (5 March 1713– 14 January 1776) was a British Army officer and member of the aristocratic Cornwallis family. After Cornwallis fought in Scotland, putting down the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, he was appointed Groom of the Chamber for King George II (a position he held for the next 17 years). He was then made Governor of Nova Scotia (1749–1752), one of the colonies in North America, and assigned to establish the new town of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Later Cornwallis returned to London, where he was elected as MP for Westminster and married the niece of Robert Walpole, Great Britain's first Prime Minister. Cornwallis was next appointed as Governor of Gibraltar.
Cornwallis arrived in Nova Scotia during a period of conflict with the local indigenous Miꞌkmaq peoples of peninsular Nova Scotia. The Mi'kmaq opposed the founding of Halifax and conducted war raids on the colony. Cornwallis responded with the extirpation proclamation of 1749, orders to bring back scalps of rebels. His administration erected forts at Grand Pre, Chignecto and Halifax and organised a militia of 840 men. Despite these efforts, the conflict would continue for several years after Cornwallis's term.
Despite the war footing, Cornwallis's administration would establish the Nova Scotian government, consisting of an Executive and Legislative Council, governed by the first constitution in a Canadian colony. It instituted the first British law courts in Canada; established a public school for orphans; and respected religious diversity through separation of church and state. It recruited European immigrants to Halifax, establishing the first Jewish community, the first ethnic German community, made up of Protestants from Germany and Switzerland, and the first Protestant dissenting congregation in a Canadian colony.
Cornwallis is commemorated in Nova Scotia in the naming of its rivers, parks, streets, towns, and buildings. Such historic commemoration of Cornwallis has become controversial because of the extirpation proclamation. In Halifax, there were numerous protests at a statue of Cornwallis in a downtown park, leading to its removal. A Halifax church, junior high school, street and park all are no longer named after Cornwallis. Other municipalities are also removing Cornwallis's name.
Cornwallis's grandfather, Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, was First Lord of the Admiralty. His maternal grandfather was Richard Butler, 1st Earl of Arran, a Governor of Ireland (1682–1684). Cornwallis was the son of Charles, 4th Baron Cornwallis, and Lady Charlotte Butler, daughter of the Earl of Arran and his wife. The Cornwallis family possessed estates at Culford in Suffolk and the Channel Islands.
Cornwallis and his twin brother, Frederick Cornwallis, were made royal pages at the age of 12. They were enrolled at Eton at age 14. Their older brother, Stephen Cornwallis, the third son born, was a career officer and rose to the rank of major-general in the Army.
Initially it was not determined which twin brother would enter the church and which the military. The matter was decided by accident: one day, Frederick fell and the injury paralysed his arm. He would take the religious path. At age 18, in 1731, Edward was commissioned into the 47th Regiment of Foot.
In the 20th regiment, led by Brig. General Thomas Bligh, Edward Cornwallis participated in the Battle of Fontenoy during the War of the Austrian Succession. He fought under Colonel Craig, who was killed in action. Cornwallis took over command of the regiment and organised a retreat. Cornwallis's regiment lost eight officers and 385 men. While the retreat was respected by the military, the British public chided the expedition for their losses.
Cornwallis played an important role in suppressing the Jacobite rising of 1745. After fighting with the victorious government soldiers at the Battle of Culloden, he led a regiment of 320 men north for the pacification of the Scottish Highlands. The Duke of Cumberland ordered him to "plunder, burn and destroy through all the west part of Invernesshire called Lochaber." Cumberland added: "You have positive orders to bring no more prisoners to the camp." Cumberland's campaign was later described by one historian as one of unrestrained violence. Cornwallis ordered his men to chase off livestock, and destroy crops and food stores. Against Cornwallis's orders, some soldiers raped and murdered non-combatants in an incident to intimidate Jacobites from further rebellion.
In 1747 Cornwallis was made a Groom of the Bedchamber, serving in the households of both kings George II and George III until 1764. He also became MP for Eye from 1743 to 1749 and then for Westminster for 1753 to 1762, in Parliament he was seen as an Old Whig.
The British Government appointed Cornwallis as Governor of Nova Scotia with the task of establishing a new British settlement to counter France's Fortress Louisbourg. In this period, governors were frequently selected from senior officers. He sailed from England aboard HMS Sphinx on 14 May 1749, followed by a settlement expedition of 15 vessels (including HMS Baltimore and HMS Winchelsea) carrying about 2500 settlers. Cornwallis arrived at Chebucto Harbour on 21 June 1749, followed by the rest of the fleet five days later. The expedition suffered only one death during the passage, due to careful preparations, good ventilation on the ships, and good luck. This was remarkable at a time when the lengthy transatlantic expeditions regularly lost large numbers of persons to infectious disease.
Cornwallis immediately had to decide where to site the town. Settlement organisers in England had recommended Point Pleasant, due to its close access to the ocean and ease of defence. His naval advisers opposed this site because it lacked shelter and had shallows preventing the docking of ocean-going ships. They wanted the town to be located at the head of Bedford Basin, a sheltered location with deep water. Others favoured Dartmouth.
Cornwallis decided to land the settlers and build the town at the site of present-day Downtown Halifax; it was halfway up the harbour with deep water, and protected by a natural, defensible hill (later known as Citadel Hill). By 24 July, the plans of the town had been drawn up. In August lots were drawn to award settlers their town plots in a settlement that was to be named "Halifax" after Lord Halifax, the President of the Board of Trade and Plantations. Lord Halifax (likely his staff) had drawn up the expedition plans for the British Government.
When Cornwallis arrived in Halifax, there had already been a decades-long history of the Mi'kmaq participating in raids on British settlements in present-day Maine, often allied with French colonists in continuing national tensions. Both sides took captives, sometimes for ransom or adoption by First Nations. (See the Northeast Coast Campaigns 1688, 1703, 1723, 1724, 1745, 1746, 1747). During this time period, various British governors had issued proclamations against the Mi'kmaq for their participation in the raids.
One of Cornwallis's first priorities was to renew early treaties with the Mi'kmaq and other indigenous tribes in the region. He met with chiefs of the Maliseet, Passamaquoddy and Mi'kmaq (Mi'kmaw) from Chignecto in the Summer of 1749. They agreed with the British to end fighting and renewed an earlier 1725 treaty drafted in Boston, redrafted as the Treaty of 1749. Cornwallis's efforts to have other Mi'kmaq tribes sign treaties were rejected. Most Mi'kmaq leaders in Nova Scotia remained loyal to the French King, Louis XV.
Mi'kmaq leaders met at St. Peters with French missionary Malliard in September 1749 to respond to these British actions. They composed a letter to Cornwallis making it clear that, while they tolerated the small garrison at Annapolis Royal, they completely opposed settlement at Halifax:
"The place where you are, where you are building dwellings, where you are now building a fort, where you want, as it were, to enthrone yourself, this land of which you want to make yourself absolute master, this land belongs to me".Mi'kmaq leaders regarded the Halifax settlement as "a great theft that you have perpetrated against me."