Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/81

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
LAYING THE STRUCTURAL BASE
69

the Hudson and the Delaware to be held on the terms customary in such cases. Giving to their estate the name New Jersey, in honor of Carteret's channel home, the promoters began at once to develop the property by offering small freeholds to emigrants on easy conditions. When the doors were thrown open, settlers came from all parts of the British Isles to join the Dutch who had already built several hamlets on the west bank of the Hudson. The first governor, Philip Carteret, brought with him about thirty adventurers and their servants, who established a community at Elizabeth. Puritans from Connecticut founded the town of Newark; Scotch-Irish Presbyterians poured into the eastern counties; and English Quakers sought their peace and prosperity to the west in the fertile regions of the Delaware.

Before their enterprise had advanced very far, the proprietors found themselves in hot water, even though they sought to govern mildly with the aid of a popular assembly. Some of the Puritan towns, following the custom of Massachusetts, insisted on limiting the local suffrage to church members and in this matter refused to bow before the authority of the common legislature. On one thing, however, they agreed with the Quakers, Presbyterians, and Dutch, namely, on opposition to paying into the proprietary chest quitrents for their lands. When the formal collection began in 1670, all local differences were sunk in a general resistance to the demands of that treasury. The assembly ousted the proprietary governor, installed a pretender, and called for concessions. Sick of the bargain, after haggling for four years, Berkeley sold his interests to certain Quaker adventurers; and somewhat later the Carteret portion passed into other hands too.

But the new proprietors of divided Jersey—East and West—were equally unhappy in their efforts to govern their turbulent tenants and at length, weary of "a very expensive feather," they turned the colony over to the Crown in 1702. Thus New Jersey became a royal province, for a