63. The Unification of the Jerseys

During the crisis years of the Glorious Revolution, both Jerseys at last rested peaceful and content. The Dominion bureaucracy had gone, and the respective sets of proprietors did not dare to stir lest their grants be revoked by the Crown. They therefore decided not to impose any rule until the smoke had cleared. Government, in both colonies, was local and purely minimal.

Dr. Daniel Coxe, court physician and non-Quaker, had, before the onset of the Dominion, bought from Edward Byllinge the sole right to govern West New Jersey as well as the largest proprietary share in that colony. He also held a much smaller share of the East New Jersey proprietorship. Coxe fought hard and successfully to prevent the Lords of Trade from annulling the charters of the two Jerseys or from amalgamating them into New York and thereby converting them into royal colonies. In the spring of 1692 Coxe sold all his rights and titles in the Jerseys to a group of non-Quaker businessmen, the West New Jersey Society, for 9,800 pounds. The society was owned by holders of 1,600 shares of stock issued at ten pounds each. Originally, the society had forty-eight stockholders, the most prominent being Sir Thomas Lane, who was to serve also as lord mayor of London.

We have already noted that the proprietors of East New Jersey had chosen the Scot Andrew Hamilton to be deputy governor in 1687. After the Dominion was imposed in 1688, Hamilton returned to England, and both the Jerseys remained without a central government until 1692. In that year, however, with the proprietorships at least temporarily saved, both of the Jerseys appointed Hamilton to be governor. The first step toward unity of the two Jerseys had begun. Hamilton took up his post in the far wealthier and more populous East New Jersey, of which Perth Amboy was the capital, and appointed Edward Hunloke to be his deputy in West New Jersey.

With the return of central and proprietary government came the return of turmoil and conflict in the Jerseys. Hamilton’s guiding instruction was to begin, once again, to enforce collections of the hated feudal quitrent.

Fearful of attempts to submerge the Jerseys into New York, East Jersey now made particular efforts to aid New York in attempting to prosecute the war against New France, and New York’s Governor Fletcher expressed his gratitude to Hamilton for the 400 pounds and the sixty-five men supplied.

Despite the fact that the proprietors of both colonies had been Quakers, the ethnic composition of the two Jerseys differed greatly. East New Jersey was heterogeneous, comprising Dutch, Puritans from New England, and Scotsmen. The Scots were mostly Presbyterians, not Quakers, despite the fact of Quaker proprietorship during the years of their migration. West New Jersey, on the other hand, was a poor, sparsely inhabited, predominantly Quaker colony.

Despite the differences, Governor Hamilton had no difficulty in persuading the supposedly pacifist Quaker Assembly of West New Jersey to join that of the East in voting ample funds to help New York in the French war. As early as the year before, the West Jersey Assembly had resolved that, while the people of the colony could not bear arms or participate in war, they could help “defend” the province, and in 1693 they voted 300 pounds for the war effort.

Paradoxically, Hamilton met the only resistance to his war plans in non-Quaker East New Jersey. Hamilton wanted the colony to supply thirty soldiers for the war, but Speaker William Lawrence of the East Jersey Assembly forced him to cut the supply to twenty. However, 430 pounds were raised for the war effort, more than matching the contribution of the year before. Even so, Hamilton wrote apologetically to Fletcher that volunteers could not be raised and that he could only raise troops to send to New York in case of invasion, and then only on condition that they would return as soon as the campaign was over.

Under Hamilton’s aegis, the powers of the local governments over the people were greatly strengthened. The counties were now authorized to levy taxes, to repay debts, and to maintain jails; the levies and appropriations were to be raised by the county judges, meeting with representatives of each town in the county. The townships were also authorized to impose the maintenance of government schools on all taxpayers of the town, even on those opposing the idea. Also, the term of conscripted militiamen was lengthened.

Hamilton ran into trouble in 1694 trying to persuade the Assembly to increase taxes in order to pay salaries to himself and other government officials. On the other hand, the Council vetoed the bill passed by the deputies raising their own salaries, the Council pointing out that its members remained unpaid.

The quitrent problem came to a head in 1695. Speaker Richard Hartshorne was the leader of the popular opposition to Hamilton and his Council. Conflicts continued in succeeding years over Hamilton’s demands for regular levying of revenue for the government as well as enforcement of the quitrent. Once again, Elizabethtown, joined by Newtown and Shrewsbury, was in the forefront of the opposition.

The landlords took the quitrent cases to the courts, and after the juries (in the words of the proprietors), “being all planters, gave a general verdict against their proprietors,” the judges arrogantly reversed the juries’ decisions. On appeal of the cases to England, the claims of the proprietors were years later rejected by the Crown. The proprietary claim to quitrents had been finally rejected.

As soon as the first of these cases had been so decided by the Crown in 1697, sixty-five citizens of Elizabethtown immediately petitioned the king for an end to the tyrannical proprietary government that persisted in exacting tribute for lands rightfully theirs.

At about this time, however, a grave new threat arose to plague the owners of landed property in East Jersey. An English court decided, on a technicality, that the land titles confirmed by former Governor Carteret had only been valid for life rather than in fee simple, for perpetuity. Hamilton now offered to reconfirm the absolute land titles, but only at the price of paying the large backlog of arrears in quitrents.

In 1697 Andrew Hamilton was removed as governor in both Jerseys. Under the general interpretation of the Navigation Act of 1696, all Scotsmen were removed from positions of public trust in the colonies. Hamilton was, therefore, replaced as governor of both Jerseys by the former Baptist minister Jeremiah Basse, who assumed his new post in early 1698.

Basse, even before his appointment, had come to be thoroughly hated in West New Jersey and the other colonies. He had earned this ire as a former agent of Dr. Coxe and the West New Jersey Society, and as an opponent of the colony’s violations of the navigation laws.

The arch-Tory and inveterate enemy of the colonies, Edward Randolph, had come to the conclusion that Scotsmen were particularly active as “smugglers” and merchants. He therefore inserted a clause into the Navigation Act of 1696 to keep them out of public office in the colonies. Basse was known as one of Randolph’s clique of “prerogative men,” and he schemed at London to use the clause to oust Hamilton and obtain the post for himself.

At first, conflict between Basse and the people of East New Jersey was not widespread or intense. The people and the proprietary were jointly engaged in another chapter of continual struggle with New York: winning for Perth Amboy the right to be a free port, unhindered by New York regulations. Using the external dispute as a method of mobilizing support, Basse managed to induce the Assembly in the spring of 1699 to increase taxes sharply, with new taxes being levied on a wide variety of property.

The new tax burdens stirred up widespread opposition in East New Jersey. A Newark town meeting denounced the tax and warned that there was no guarantee that the money would be used for the announced purposes. Anyway, there was clearly no danger of invasion from New York. The Newark meeting resolved unanimously not to pay the new tax and to resist its collection. Led by young Lewis Morris II, a councillor and merchant (later chief justice of New York and governor of New Jersey), the towns of Newark, Elizabethtown, Perth Amboy, and Freehold joined to protest to the proprietors against the rule of Basse. They also specifically attacked a resolution of the lower house of the Assembly praising the Basse administration.

Morris, indeed, had challenged Basse’s rule from the beginning, denying the authority of the Basse-appointed court. Fined for contempt, Morris managed to escape from prison. He continued relentlessly to challenge the basis of proprietary rule; such rule, he asserted, was by persons “who really have not the right to govern.” He also denounced the quitrent as an unjust tax “upon us and our heirs forever.”

Morris was now, in April 1699, charged by the Council with seditious assembly, with intent to subvert the laws, and with “malicious and reproachful words” against Governor Basse. In May a grand jury indicted Morris, along with Surveyor General George Willocks, and Secretary Thomas Gordon, for stirring up opposition in the towns to the taxes levied in March. The next day a large group from Elizabethtown attacked the jail holding Morris et al. and freed the eminent prisoners. Among the leaders of this revolutionary attack were such well-known citizens as Justice Benjamin Price, Isaac Whitehead, and Jonathan Ogden, Jr.

By this time, Basse had left for England to discuss the dispute with New York. Andrew Bowne now ruled as deputy governor. Shortly after their coerced release from prison, Morris and Willocks called on the Council to yield, and sent an armed sloop against Perth Amboy “firing guns by way of defiance to the government.” Bowne and the Assembly decided to order the suppression of the insurrection in the province. But the Assembly realized that virtually the whole province opposed the new taxes, and the bulk of its members walked out in protest against them. Only placid Bergen County was not in a state of rebellion.

With this kind of opposition in the Assembly, reinforced by the proprietors’ decision to appoint the revolutionary Thomas Gordon as attorney general of the colony, Bowne did nothing to enforce the tax act or to suppress the insurrection.

Morris’ rebellion had succeeded, for soon after Basse returned from England in the summer of 1699, Andrew Hamilton was reappointed governor of the Jerseys. Scotsmen, it was now ruled, were able to hold office in the colonies, and the proprietors seized the opportunity to reappoint Hamilton and end the calamitous regime of Basse.

If Governor Basse precipitated conflict and oppression in East New Jersey, his rule over the Quaker colony of West New Jersey was a veritable reign of terror. Hamilton had left West New Jersey alone. As a result, the Quakers’ largely libertarian society was not confronted, as in previous years, with the threat of proprietary despotism. As soon as Basse took power, however, he imposed a program of reactionary change upon the colony. Virtually his first act was to oust the previous Council and the judges, and to fill their posts with his friends and favorites, almost all non-Quakers.

The Quaker lower house tried to oppose Basse’s accession to power, whereupon he promptly began to throw them into prison. Peter Fretwell, former treasurer of the colony, was jailed by Basse for “not acknowledging the government.” Furthermore, the great leader of the liberal forces in West New Jersey, Speaker of the House Samuel Jennings, was arrested in the spring of 1699 for saying that Basse’s commission as governor was illegal, and for slandering one of Basse’s appointed councillors as “a papist.”

Three of the new councillors, indeed, published a book denouncing Jennings as the key to the seditious opposition. They wrote: “Samuel Jennings being the leading man of that party... now sings his old song over again, and affirms the Government to be in the people thereby encouraging and exciting the people to rebellion against the present Governor, and other their lawful rulers, to the great obstruction of the peace and property of the Province.” Fretwell and Thomas Gardiner, furthermore, were indicted “for setting the province in a flame,” but they refused to appear for their trial.

Rebellion did, indeed, burst forth in Salem, where the government was resisted and the Basse-appointed magistrates expelled from the town. But the governor sent in fifty soldiers and was able to suppress the rebellion. Basse found, however, that he could not suppress the voices of his opposition. Samuel Jennings, undaunted, not only organized a giant anti-Basse petition, but also broadened his attack to include the whole proprietary regime, particularly for violating the rights of liberty and self-government that had been granted to the people in the old Concessions.

Andrew Hamilton returned as governor in December 1699 only to find both colonies in a state of outright rebellion. In West New Jersey the Basse-puppet council was unceremoniously removed, and the revolutionary leaders returned to their posts: Jennings to Speaker of the House, Fretwell to treasurer; Gardiner became king’s attorney.

But both Jerseys were now in the midst of a revolutionary situation, and a mere change of governors was no longer enough to appease the popular opposition. The spark for the rebellion in both colonies was the increase in taxes, and a mere change of personnel would not be enough to relieve the situation.

To Lewis Morris and the people of East New Jersey, only the liquidation of the proprietorship would suffice to end the rebellion. The proprietors were, indeed, negotiating with the Crown for surrender of their right to govern, though not of their land claims. However, proprietary government continued in the meanwhile, until the Crown’s decision should be made. But the revolution roared on. In March 1700, justices of the Middlesex County Court—all councillors—were barred from the courtroom by a rebellious crowd led by Edward Slater, one of the main leaders of the rebellion against Carteret nearly twenty years before. A week later, Samuel Carter, leading an angry crowd, denounced the proceedings of the Essex County Court, and the court ordered Carter arrested for contempt, “which may, if not timely prevented, turn to a convulsion in government to the ruin of the colony.” It may be noted that the crowd supporting Carter included such prominent citizens as Justice Benjamin Price, a former councillor.

By July, however, Lewis Morris had betrayed the revolution he had led, and now shifted vigorously to the other side. Returning to the Council as Hamilton’s appointee for president, Morris warned everyone to submit to the governor. Soon Morris had an opportunity to betray his own neighbors in Monmouth County. The newly appointed sheriff, the Scotsman John Stewart, was on a rampage in the county, jailing rebels. Friends of those about to be arrested thereupon attacked Stewart and forced him to flee. Learning of a plan to free one of the captured men, Morris informed Hamilton, who appeared with an armed troop and then demanded the surrender of two of the opposition leaders, Richard Salter and John Bray. But the free men of Monmouth County by now numbered six-to-one against Hamilton and Morris. Aroused, a hundred citizens of Middletown, armed with clubs, marched to confront the governor’s force. A compromise averted an armed clash when the prisoners agreed to put up bail as security for good behavior.

The renegade Morris had been given the task of suppressing the rebellion, and his unpopularity was assured when he threatened to drench the colony in the blood of the rebels who did not yield. With Morris ordered to seize Salter and Bray, Monmouth, Middlesex, and Essex counties conferred to decide their next move. They decided to resist Morris’ power and to seize, arrest, and incarcerate Hamilton, Morris, and Councillor Samuel Leonard until the Crown made up its mind on the future of the colony. Town after town rose in revolt against arbitrary arrests.

A grand jury of Monmouth County soon indicted sixteen men, including Salter and Bray, for riotous assembly and assault of Sheriff Stewart. But the rebels remained undaunted. In September the Essex County Court at Newark had its proceedings interrupted by Samuel Carter, who challenged the authority of the court. The constable ordered to seize the prisoner was himself assaulted by the rebels. The rebels also assaulted Councillor William Sandford, the president of the court. The rebels were led by Carter and Thomas Johnson, a long-time high official in the colony and a leader of the rebellion under Carteret. Two days later a large group of horsemen arrived from Elizabethtown to demand of the Essex County judges the freeing of one of the prisoners, Joseph Parmeter. Led by Samuel Carter and Samuel Whitehead, the rebels, on being refused, seized the sheriff and forced him to free Parmeter. Soon afterward, in retaliation, two grand juries indicted eighty-five Elizabethtown men for joining in the insurrectionary action.

The revolutionaries countered by signing an Elizabethtown petition to the king against the proprietors. In it they attacked the quitrent, which was being exacted even after the royal courts had disallowed it, and they asked the Crown to replace the proprietary with a royal governor. Leading the opposition to the proprietary in the Assembly, which convened in May 1700, was Councillor John Royce. The councillor held an old Nicolls patent for his lands; this fact jeopardized the lands and subjected it to quitrent exactions so long as the proprietary continued.

Hamilton convened the Assembly, but only to try to get a tax bill passed. He soon saw that there was no chance of success. Moreover, he saw the danger of the Assembly approving the antiproprietary petition. Therefore, Hamilton made haste to dissolve the Assembly. But the East New Jersey petition helped galvanize the Board of Trade to annul the Jersey proprietary. The East New Jersey proprietary tried to stem the tide by its “Answer” to the petition, sent to the Crown in December. The “Answer” trenchantly attacked the colonial resistance to payment of quitrents as a logical prelude to denial of the royal power itself. It concluded that the settlers viewed themselves as the absolute owners of the soil, and hence entitled to an independent government of their own. The proprietors darkly charged that the rebels were merely “a few factious and mutinous people impatient of any government.”

The following March (1701), the pattern of revolt against the proprietary courts continued. As the Monmouth court, headed by Governor Hamilton, was examining an accused smuggler named Moses Butterworth, Samuel Willet, an innkeeper, challenged the authority of the court. Willet charged into the court with a company of fifty militiamen. A battle ensued between the police on one side, and the militiamen and the crowd, led by Benjamin Price and Richard Borden, on the other. The rebels proceeded to free Butterworth and to seize the justices, the attorney general, and the other officers of the court. The next day the court, with Samuel Leonard presiding, was able to reassert its authority despite a challenge by Eleazer Catterall, who refused to serve on the compulsory jury, and the refusal of the former court clerk James Bollen to surrender the court records. The court quickly seized, convicted, and fined all those denying its authority and refusing to serve on the grand jury.

After the disastrous Assembly session, Hamilton had decided not to convene it again and to rule only with the help of the Council. In May 1701 Hamilton and the Council petitioned the king to order the people of East New Jersey to obey the proprietary government. Hamilton complained that since he had not received official approbation of the Crown, “the licentious past” of the people, “who look on all government to be a yoke,” had repudiated his authority and all of his actions. As a result, he pointed out, the “reins of government” are “cut in pieces” and the people run into “anarchy and confusion.”

But Hamilton was soon to find that the Council was hardly more tractable than the House of Deputies. First, in late 1700 George Willocks, deputy for the proprietors, led a revolt against the leading proprietor, William Dockwra, the proprietors’ executive secretary. The Council stalled hearings on Willocks’ charges of corruption and injustice against Dockwra, but it finally consented to a hearing the following August. Willocks charged Dockwra with usurpation of governmental rule, levying arbitrary fines on local landowners, voiding good land titles, and demanding bribes for settling land claims. Backed by the deputy secretary and six resident proprietors, the Council turned against Dockwra and the Board of Resident Proprietors finally removed him from his post.

But the Dockwra problem was purely internal to the ruling oligarchy of proprietors and their favorites. Also internal, but far more challenging to the existing regime, was a sudden move by former governor Andrew Bowne at the Council meeting in June 1701 to claim the post of governor. Bowne declared that the proprietors had appointed him, but he was challenged by the resident proprietors, headed by David Lyell, who pronounced Bowne’s claim defective and who charged that the whole thing was an anti-Hamilton maneuver invented by Richard Salter. Bowne’s claim was also backed by William Dockwra, who was evidently taking the opportunity to try to oust a regime that had already turned against him.

Lewis Morris, now agent of the resident proprietors, decided that the best course would be to abolish the weak and confused proprietary rule, and to replace it with a royal government headed by Hamilton. In that way, Hamilton and the ruling oligarchy in East New Jersey could end the permanent rebellion and entrench themselves in power, backed by the might and prestige of the royal government.

As rebellion settled into a permanent state, the Tory advisers of the colonies began to offer their solutions. Edward Randolph, in February 1701, advocated not only the end of proprietary government (though not of its land claims) but also the annihilation of the Jerseys. Randolph urged that East New Jersey be annexed to New York and West New Jersey to Pennsylvania; in the meanwhile, all is “in confusion for want of government.” Andrew Bowne also moved in again, hoping to have his post restored. He called for drastic enforcement of the generally violated Navigation Acts. Bowne suggested amalgamating the Jerseys with Delaware, as part of Pennsylvania.

The proprietors themselves, indeed, were rapidly becoming reconciled to the end of their rule, and they submitted a memorial to the Crown outlining the conditions for voluntary surrender of their governmental rights. The petition, incidentally, was jointly submitted by the proprietors of East New Jersey and West New Jersey. The final surrender by the proprietors and the acceptance by the Crown were accomplished in mid-April 1702. The Crown decided to grant some, but not all, of the proprietors’ original conditions. Proprietary rights to the soil were reconfirmed, along with the quitrents due. All land titles issued by the proprietors were confirmed. The governor was instructed to forbid any tax on unimproved (that is, arbitrarily granted) lands, thus greatly aiding the land engrossing pursued by the proprietors. Another important privilege granted to the proprietors was a monopoly of all purchase of land from the Indians; this gratuity in effect made vague and arbitrary land grants to the existing landed proprietors.

After April 1702, then, the proprietary government was no more; both Jerseys were now united into one New Jersey, a royal colony.

Andrew Hamilton had had no easier time in West New Jersey. The revolutionary state had continued in that colony as well. To a greater extent than in the East, the focal point of resistance was taxation. The unique element in West New Jersey was that a high tax program had been instituted by an alliance of Hamilton with the Quaker-dominated House. By 1701 a general refusal to pay taxes pervaded the colony, a refusal which included the threat of violence against the hated tax collectors. As in East New Jersey, the rebels refused to pay the courts security for good behavior. In March nearly eighty people rioted in Burlington, broke into prison, and released two men who had refused to put up security for failing to pay taxes.

Furthermore, Quaker imposition of high taxes seemed inconsistent with Quaker principles to a group of dissident Quakers, who had seceded from the fold. It was these dissident Quakers who formed the bulk of the revolutionaries in West New Jersey. At regular Quaker meetings they were denounced as “seditious.”

The proprietors were anxious to have Andrew Hamilton appointed royal governor of the united New Jersey, but this was one privilege they were not to receive. The Crown’s appointed Council for the new colony included six officials from each Jersey, largely taken from the oligarchical leadership of the two former colonies. Councillor Lewis Morris was designated acting governor by the Crown in June 1702, pending a final appointment. Finally, toward the end of the year, the Crown made New York’s governor, Lord Cornbury, governor of New Jersey as well. Cornbury assumed his post in July of the following year.

The Crown decided to alternate meetings of the unified General Assembly between the respective capitals of Perth Amboy and Burlington. The House of Representatives was to consist of twelve representatives from each of the two former divisions, two apiece to be sent by the two capital cities.

Thus, the structure of New Jersey was now similar to that of the other royal colonies: an appointed governor and Council, an elected lower house. Appeals could be made to the king in major judicial cases. The Crown accepted the proprietors’ request for high minimum voting requirements: voters had to own at least one hundred acres and representatives one thousand acres. Lewis Morris had warned that without the latter requirement “those persons of best estate... and the proprietors’ interest... would be at the disposal of the tag, rag, and rascality.” In short, the property qualification was a method of attempting to secure control of even the Assembly by the proprietors. In addition, the people lost the right to have a regular annual Assembly. The rights to call and dissolve the legislature, and to appoint judges and courts, were lodged in the royal governors. But the crucial rights, those of levying taxes for support of the government, remained with the Assembly.

Also granted were more worthwhile requests of the proprietors: for example, permitting Quakers to avoid taking an oath of office. Religious liberty was also granted to everyone but Roman Catholics, continuing the East New Jersey policy passed under the Law of Rights and Privileges of 1698. But this provision was a mixed blessing. From the time of the original Concessions, at the outset of the colonies, both Jerseys had enjoyed extensive religious liberty. By its discrimination, the new proviso was a setback for the Catholics. On the other hand, there was an advance in another direction. The law of 1698 had eliminated the power of the Assembly to establish ministers; but now separation of church and state, without which there can be no full religious liberty, was decreed for the colony as a whole. The important exception was a proprietary grant to each township of two hundred acres of government land for support of a minister; this feature enabled some of the Puritan towns in New Jersey to keep an established church.

As to the proprietors’ request to make Perth Amboy and Burlington free ports, without harassment from New York, the Crown suggested that this would be granted only if the New Jersey Assembly raised its customs duties and regulations to equal New York’s—thus ending embarrassing free competition with the highly taxed and regulated port of New York, and increasing the royal revenue extracted from the colonies.

Lewis Morris tried to use the new accession of royal power, as well as his leading role in the colony, to establish the Anglican church. As early as 1697 he tried to pass such a bill, but it was defeated by the combined efforts of Richard Hartshorne, Quaker, and Andrew Bowne, Baptist. One of Morris’ main reasons for wanting the proprietors ousted was to further the project of an Anglican establishment. But the royal government would not establish a religion that was very weak in the colony—indeed, weak everywhere north of Maryland. The lack of a bishop resident in the colonies also handicapped the growth of Anglicanism. For example, it was difficult for one aspiring to the Anglican ministry to be ordained; either a bishop had to come from England to perform the ceremony (and few chose to come) or the would-be priest had to travel to England.

What happened, incidentally, to the ultra-Puritan settlement at Newark that was founded by the former New Haven minister Abraham Pierson in 1667? Newark continued at first as a rigorously Puritan township, but Pierson died in 1678 and was succeeded by his son, Rev. Abraham Pierson, Jr. Typical of the Puritan ministry throughout New England, New York, and New Jersey, the younger Pierson was drifting strongly toward Presbyterianism. As a result, Newark ended its established church in 1687 and threw Pierson’s salary open to voluntary subscription. Pierson was thereby obliged to move elsewhere. The ultratheocratic experiment at Newark had collapsed.

Thus New Jersey took its place after 1702 as a Northern royal colony, with appointed governor and Council, and a popularly elected Assembly. Proprietary tyranny and attempts to impose taxes, quitrents, and arbitrary land allocations ceased, but royal government, in alliance with the land claims of the proprietary, continued the power of the old oligarchy. Also ended, forcibly, were the several years of successful rebellion in New Jersey. The colony continued to be relatively individualistic, however, and to enjoy religious liberty and diversity.