[2] One of the sons of the bookseller and publisher Charles Rivington, he inherited a share of his father's business, which he lost at the Newmarket races.

"[5] The first of a number of newspapers, The New York Gazetteer or the Connecticut, New Jersey, Hudson's River, and Quebec Weekly Advertiser, was issued in April 1773.

[6] His initially-impartial stance shifted as a revolution loomed, and public opinion polarized,[7] By late 1774,[8] he was advocating the restrictive measures of the British government with such great zeal and attacking the Patriots so severely[9] that in 1775, the Whigs of Newport, Rhode Island, resolved to hold no further communication with him.

He infuriated Captain Isaac Sears, the prominent patriot and Son of Liberty: He would appear as a leading man amongst us, without perceiving that he is enlisted under a party as a tool of the lowest order; a political cracker, sent abroad to alarm and terrify, sure to do mischief to the cause he means to support, and generally finishing his career in an explosion that often bespatters his friends[10]His son Jonx was a lieutenant in the 83rd Regiment of Foot (Royal Glasgow Volunteers) and died in England in 1809.

Rivington, who opened a drug shop, would have been the last New Yorker suspected of playing the part of a spy for the Continentals, but he furnished General George Washington with important information.

Ashbel Green described Rivington as "the greatest sycophant imaginable; very little under the influence of any principle but self-interest, yet of the most courteous manners to all with whom he had intercourse.

"[19] Alexander Graydon, in his Memoirs, wrote of Rivington: "This gentleman's manners and appearance were sufficiently dignified; and he kept the best company, He was an everlasting dabbler in theatrical heroics.