53. Turmoil in East New Jersey, 1678-1686

When Governor Edmund Andros returned in 1678 from his trip to England, he had decided that he had a mandate for sovereignty under the Duke of York over East New Jersey and West New Jersey. The latent explosiveness of two contradictory charters for New Jersey had now erupted. In March 1680 Andros seized ships going to Elizabeth that had not paid customs fees in New York. He ordered Governor Philip Carteret of East New Jersey to cease exercising jurisdiction, and all the inhabitants to bow to his own authority as governor. Andros’ action was clearly stimulated by Carteret’s permitting all ships to trade freely in East New Jersey, without paying customs duties in New York. In short, Andros’ aggressive actions were partly motivated by an attempt to secure a monopoly of trade for the New York port.

Carteret replied forthrightly that East New Jersey was subject to the proprietorship of Sir George Carteret, and that East New Jersey would defend itself as best it could against any force by Andros. When the New York Council ordered the New Jersey towns to send representatives to a meeting at Woodbridge on April 7, the alarmed Carteret countermanded the order and warned that he would arrest any emissaries of Andros as subversive “spies and disturbers of the public peace.” Carteret insisted on his province’s independence: “It was by His Majesty’s command that this government was established, and without the same command we shall never be resigned, but with our lives and fortunes, the people resolving to live and die with the name of true subjects and not traitors.”

In May Andros issued a warrant for the arrest of Philip Carteret and a few of his leading councillors “for having presumed to assume and exercise authority and jurisdiction over the King’s subjects.” Carteret was seized, beaten, and tried before the New York Court of Assizes. He defended himself vigorously and protested a court where the accuser, jailor, and judge were one. The jury, however, upset Andros’ imperialist plans by acquitting Carteret, a verdict they thrice persisted in, even under severe pressure from Andros. The court, however, ordered Carteret to cease jurisdiction, and Andros and his Council went to Elizabethtown to meet the deputies from Jersey.

Edmund Andros had now assumed the governorship of East New Jersey. Addressing the meeting of the deputies in June 1680, he told them he forgave their trespasses against authority, and suggested that they put the Duke’s Laws into effect and name Isaac Whitehead as clerk. The Assembly demanded that it be called annually, but Andros and his Council retorted that an Assembly would be called whenever Andros deemed it necessary. The Assembly also asked Andros to confirm the privileges granted it in the Concessions and Agreements, but the governor dismissed this as irrelevant and unnecessary. When the Assembly kept pressing its requests for confirmation of New Jersey liberties and provisions for regular meetings, Andros and his Council peremptorily dissolved the New Jersey representative body.

Philip Carteret, not able to muster force against his powerful neighbor, was now in a doubly weak position: Sir George Carteret had died, and his grandson and heir, Sir George, did not have the old proprietor’s influence at court. But resistance appeared among the people of New Jersey. In the July meeting at Woodbridge, the freeholders refused to obey Andros’ order to nominate local magistrates for his approval. They insisted, instead, that their charter gave them the right to choose their own magistrates. A month later Samuel Moore signed a further refusal by Woodbridge to obey the order and Samuel Dennis refused Andros’ appointment as court clerk. Moore was arrested and tried before Andros and the New York court. Upon recanting this error and promising good behavior, Moore was released.

Two Jerseyites were also arrested for speaking words tending to disturb the peace. A transient surveyor, William Taylor, denounced Andros and the Council as rogues and traitors and said that he would not be governed by such men. Taylor was arrested and after recanting, dismissed on good behavior by Andros and his Council. A laborer, John Curtis, arrested for similar seditious remarks, broke bail and disappeared.

By late 1680, however, the Duke of York’s political position in England had deteriorated, and he was anxious to avoid making further enemies at home. In November the duke informed Andros that the Jerseys were to be governed by their proprietors. Andros was shortly recalled as governor and returned to England.

The Andros menace removed, Philip Carteret, in early 1681, jubilantly countermanded Andros’ usurpations and ordered the citizens of New Jersey to ignore the courts that New York had intended to operate there. But in his joy, Carteret grew cocky and began to assert his authority aggressively, internally and externally. Externally, Carteret suddenly laid claim to Staten Island, and ordered its citizens to obey him rather than New York. This question remained in the hands of the Duke of York. Meanwhile, Carteret faced far greater troubles at home.

The Assembly (with the former anti-Andros seditionist John Curtis a member) met in October and took the opportunity to have a new regime to urge reaffirmation of the original Concessions of 1665 without the oppressive amendments of the declarations of 1672 and 1674. These amendments had shifted many powers from the Assembly to the appointed executive, and had deprived the people of many of their liberties. Carteret’s old troubles with the people now resumed. Carteret and his Council bitterly attacked the Assembly for its presumption. Once again, the lower house threw down the gauntlet, declaring that the inhabitants of New Jersey “were not obliged to conform” to these later declarations and instructions. The New Jersey rebellion was now in full bloom against Carteret.

The Council now insisted that the deputies pay the governor’s salary and also the past and current quitrents to the proprietor, a request met with only scorn by the Assembly. After several furious interchanges, the governor and Council dissolved the Assembly at the suggestion of Councillor Robert Vicars. To protest this dissolution, Edward Slater, deputy from Piscataway, called a protest meeting that was invaded by two Council members, Henry Greenland and Robert Vicars. The councillors accused Slater of sedition and of rendering Carteret and his government “odious in the eyes and hearts of the people.” They also accused Slater of trying to stir up mutiny, insurrection, and open rebellion. Greenland and Vicars promptly had Slater arrested. They then tried Slater in their capacity as justices of the peace, and convicted him on their own testimony! This court was conducted on no legal grounds; yet the two judges sentenced Slater to a six-month term in prison.

Vicars now urged Carteret to take full control of the colony by ignoring the requirement that the Assembly establish the courts and by creating his own prerogative courts instead. New Jersey was now back to the appointed courts and the despotism of the 1666–73 era. Meanwhile, however, a great change in the government of East New Jersey was under way. The estate of Sir George Carteret sold the proprietorship of East New Jersey at auction in February 1682 to a group of twelve men (eleven of them Quakers) headed by the eminent William Penn, for 3,400 pounds. In August the twelve expanded the partnership to twenty-four, including ten more Quakers, and this patent was reconfirmed by the Duke of York the following March. Thus, by the end of 1682, Quakers, though still periodically persecuted in England, owned the colonies of East New Jersey, West New Jersey, and the extensive new territory on the west bank of the upper Delaware known as Pennsylvania, granted by King Charles II to William Penn in March 1681.

However, with Quakers already settled in West New Jersey and prepared to pour into Pennsylvania, East New Jersey was not a likely field for Quaker settlement. There were Quaker groups at Shrewsbury and Middletown, but most other Jersey towns were ardently Puritan. With the English Quakers immigrating to Pennsylvania and West New Jersey, the leading role in East New Jersey was taken by the Scots among the proprietors, particularly by young Robert Barclay and his prominent non-Quaker relatives, the archroyalists James Drummond, Earl of Percy, and his brother John Drummond, the Viscount Melfort. An eminent Quaker, Barclay was a close friend of the Duke of York and was appointed governor of East New Jersey in the fall of 1682. Barclay immediately began to organize Scottish settlements in East New Jersey and to remodel the government of the colony. Many leading Scots were induced to buy fractional proprietorships in the colony; eventually, Scots formed a majority of the proprietary ownership.

The proprietors appointed the prominent English Quaker lawyer Thomas Rudyard, one of the proprietors and a close friend of Penn, to be resident deputy governor of East New Jersey. Rudyard arrived in Jersey to take office in November 1682. The proprietors instructed Rudyard to convey to the Jersey citizens the welcome news of the confirming of their rights granted to them by the Concessions of 1665. The proprietors adopted the Fundamental Constitutions, a highly complex and overblown constitution for the colony, which would have granted great power to themselves—voting by proxy in the East New Jersey Council. But the Fundamental Constitutions was never put into effect, not only because it was rejected by the Assembly, but also because it was even turned down by the deputy governor and his Council.

The Assembly, called into being again, met frequently during Governor Rudyard’s rule in 1683. All sides were determined to be conciliatory and to undo the influence of the despotic Carteret clique. As a result, the court proceedings since late 1681 were voided and the leaders of the Carteret clique—Robert Vicars, who had been secretary of the colony, Henry Greenland, Samuel Edsall, and Robert Vauquellin, former surveyor general—were debarred from all public office. Edward Slater now took the opportunity to sue Vicars for trespass, false arrest, and imprisonment; he collected forty-five pounds in damages. Vicars was also convicted of keeping fraudulent records and was fined and imprisoned until payment of the fine.

But despite the harmony of Council and Assembly in ridding the colony of the influence of the Carteret clique, divisions between deputies and ruling Council again emerged and deepened during 1683. The deputies urged the right of each town to adopt local ordinances without being subject to veto by the governor and Council, and the similar right to impose local taxes. Furthermore, Middletown and Shrewsbury again raised the question of the old Nicolls patents and claimed that by these they were exempt from paying quitrents to the new proprietors. Rudyard and the Council rejected these claims, and considerable friction developed over them. The towns and the deputies also vainly objected to the continuation of the compulsory militia, a provision of the declaration of 1672. In each case, as before, the deputies assumed the role of libertarian opposition to the existing regime. However, the Assembly did create a regular judicial system; the law code continued the Puritan outlawing of such “deviations” as stage plays, games, dances, drunkenness, and profaning the Sabbath. Here, the Anglican Council played a more liberal role than did the Puritan deputies; the Council reduced the penalty for not attending church services. The Council also declared itself for liberty of conscience and against compulsory worship.

By the end of 1683 Governor Rudyard had incurred the displeasure of the proprietors, largely because Rudyard and the Council, eager to attract settlers to East New Jersey, failed to adhere to the clause in the Concessions reserving one-seventh of the lands to the proprietors. Samuel Groom, one of the Quaker proprietors, had been sent out with Rudyard to serve under him as surveyor general of the colony. Groom now insisted on the land reservation and was quickly dismissed by Rudyard. Rudyard’s firing of Groom led to his own dismissal and replacement, toward the end of 1683, by the Quaker Gawen Larie, lately become one of the proprietors.

By the end of 1684, enough of the proprietors, particularly the Scots, had immigrated to East New Jersey that the governing proprietors’ interest in the colony, especially in land matters, was transferred to the fourteen resident proprietors, forming the Board of Proprietors of East New Jersey. The board was empowered to deal with all matters concerning proprietary land, land claims, collecting quitrents, boundaries, etc. The resident proprietors ratified the laws of the Rudyard Assembly, but added what the Assembly had refused to pass: exemption of the pacifist Quakers from military service.

The biggest problem of the Larie administration was an attempt to collect feudal quitrents from the settlers in behalf of the proprietors. Larie was originally instructed by the impatient proprietors to collect the quitrents. In late 1684 the proprietors instructed Larie and the resident proprietors to make an end of all controversies over land titles and quitrents. Specifically, they arrogantly declared their absolute refusal to recognize any of the old Nicolls patents or to commute any of their quitrents, even including the arrears. Wrangling between the Larie administration and the various towns lasted a year and a half, so that no further Assembly was convened until the spring of 1686.

In 1684 all East New Jersey towns except Bergen were still claiming exemption from all quitrents on the ground that their old Nicolls land patents, or Indian purchases, were superior to the proprietary claim. Moreover, many settlers avoided payment of quitrents by not officially patenting their lands. The old Navesink towns of Middletown and Shrewsbury also claimed the full right to make their own laws and elect their officers under the Nicolls patents and the Nicolls-promulgated Duke’s Laws (but now forgotten by the East New Jersey governors). Over against this permanent state of quasirebellion, Larie was supposed to persuade the six towns of the colony that the Nicolls patents—or Indian lands or governmental patents—were invalid, and that all landowners must pay the quitrents due since their inception in 1670.

The new proprietary program of strict enforcement of quitrents was bound to create fierce opposition in the colony. The first crackdown was imposed in late 1684 on John Berry of Bergen, who was a revered old settler, an agent of William Penn in East Jersey, a councillor, and a former deputy governor. Berry was opposed to enforcing quitrents and had never paid any due on his own extensive lands. He countered by dramatically challenging the validity of the Court of Common Right—the new supreme court of the colony, founded during the Rudyard regime. The court fined Berry for contempt, and Berry’s refusal to pay finally caused his imprisonment in early 1685. By now Berry had become the leader of the colony’s resistance to quitrents, and the outcome of the Berry case would greatly influence the path of opposition. The Board of Proprietors, in one of its first acts, backed up Larie, determined on no abatement of quitrents, and took up the prosecution of Berry. Berry finally yielded, however, when the board commuted his back quitrents of over 116 pounds to 70 pounds.

During this time, negotiations began with the Navesink towns of Middletown and Shrewsbury. The men of these towns, headed by the Quaker Richard Hartshorne, steadfastly refused to pay quitrents and Larie and the Board of Proprietors began to seize the property of the resisters. This forced the Navesink towns to yield by mid-1685. No agreement, however, was concluded with Piscataway, Newark, or Elizabethtown, although some individual owners in the last town took out their patents to land titles, thus following the lead of Navesink. On the other hand, Woodbridge surrendered to the proprietary in the spring, following the lead of former provincial treasurer Samuel Moore, who capitulated after having vowed to pay no quitrents whatever.

Larie and the Council finally, in April 1686, called the Assembly into session to demand an increase in taxes, largely for the expenses of the secretary and the Council. The deputies incisively replied that they saw no reason why the people should be forced to pay for the expenses of officers whom they had no power to select.

In the fall of 1686 Governor Larie was removed, the proprietors being disgruntled with what they believed to be Larie’s (as well as Rudyard’s before him) lack of zeal in reserving land to the proprietors. Larie had also shown a lack of interest in obtaining a high price in the sale of land to the settlers. The proprietors censured Larie’s granting himself a large tract of unused land at a cheap price, and his failure to push for approval of the Fundamental Constitutions.

Larie was succeeded as governor by the Scot Neil Campbell. In the fall meeting of the Assembly, Lord Campbell tried once again to insist that it increase taxes. Speaker Richard Hartshorne defiantly spoke for the deputies when he bluntly declared that the people “were not willing to maintain a government against themselves.” Hence no revenue act was passed. At the end of the year, Campbell returned to Scotland. He nominated the Scottish merchant and proprietor Andrew Hamilton as deputy governor.

The failure of New York’s attempt to assume power over East Jersey created a gaping hole in New York’s attempted port monopoly. Smuggling was also rampant in East Jersey, and New Yorkers kept agitating for forcible annexation of that colony; the merchants desired to secure their monopoly, and the New York farmers and rural elements were envious of Jersey’s freedom of trade. These grievances culminated in 1678, when a royal order made Perth Amboy, the newly built capital of East Jersey, an approved port of entry, an act which accelerated the migration of merchants and other citizens from New York to New Jersey.