Conceived in Liberty (87 page)

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.