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Illustrated Episode · Volume I, chapter 43 · 1 June 1671

Not the governor's to give

In a sunlit dirt lane, eight townsmen in plain wool and broad hats haul on a rope and pry with poles, tearing a split-rail fence apart as rails fly, while two rip boards from a new house behind.
Elizabethtown, East Jersey, 1671. Governor Carteret has handed a town lot to a freed servant without asking the town meeting, so the town's leaders tear out his fence and rip the boards off a corner of his house. Rothbard reads it as New Englanders defending their town's rights against a proprietary governor. Carteret could do nothing, and a court fined the leaders. Chapter 43 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

Elizabethtown was settled by New Englanders on a grant from Governor Nicolls, and its people ran their affairs through a town meeting, as they had at home. In the spring of 1670 the town refused to pay the proprietors' quitrent, holding that the Nicolls grant exempted it. Governor Philip Carteret, who kept a house, orchard and farm in the town, went on deciding town business on his own. Then in 1671, Rothbard writes, Carteret, "without consulting the town meeting, granted town land to Robert Michel, one of his indentured servants now at the end of his term" (CiL, p. 323). In protest the town leaders pulled down Michel's fence and part of his house. In November the Assembly set up a special court to try them for riot. Eight men were indicted and fined five pounds each, the chief culprit seven, for using, as they saw it, no more force than it took to remove an obstruction from town land. Carteret could do nothing more. Rothbard's point is that the town held its land by its own grant and its own meeting, and a governor could not hand it out by decree. The son of one of the protesters was chosen town constable.

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. I, ch. 43, pp. 321-327. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. William A. Whitehead, East Jersey under the Proprietary Governments, 2nd ed. (Newark: N.J. Historical Society, 1875): pp. 60-61 n. (Assembly of November 1671 and the Court of Oyer and Terminer for the Elizabethtown rioters, citing East Jersey Records Lib. 3, p. 18), p. 123 (Elizabethtown as seat of government, Carteret's house, orchards and farm). Secondary source
  3. Cyclopedia of New Jersey Biography, vol. I (early 20th century), sketch of Samuel Marsh: eight townsmen indicted for riot for pulling up the fence of 'Richard Mitchell', to whom Carteret had given a lot; each fined five pounds, the chief culprit seven. A compiled genealogical sketch citing the county records; the year of publication was not checked. Secondary source
  4. '1650-1700 in Western European fashion', Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09-29): coat and waistcoat replacing the doublet, the falling band gone by the mid-1660s. Secondary source
  5. David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 'Massachusetts Dress Ways'. Secondary source