freedom was at that time almost a wilderness.

The first occu

pation of Fort Nassau in Gloucester, and the grants to Godyn and Blommaert, above Cape May, had been of so little avail that, in 1634, not a single white man dwelt within the bay of the Delaware. The pioneers of Sir Edmund Ployden and the restless emigrants from New Haven had each been unsuccessful. Here and there, in the counties of Gloucester and Burlington, a Swedish farmer may have preserved his dwelling on the Jersey side of the river; and, before 1664, perhaps three Dutch families were established about Burlington; but as yet West New Jersey had not a hamlet. In East Jersey, of which the hills and the soil had been trodden by the mariners of Hudson, a trading station seems, in 1618, to have been occupied at Bergen. In December, 1651, Augustine Herman purchased, but hardly took possession of, the land that stretched from Newark bay to the west of Elizabethtown; while, in January, 1658, other purchasers obtained the large grant called Bergen, where the early station became a permanent settlement. Before the end of 1664, a few families of Quakers appear to have found a refuge south of Raritan bay.

More than a year earlier, New England Puritans, sojourners on Long Island, solicited of the Dutch, and, as the records prove, obtained leave to establish on the banks of the Raritan and the Minisink their cherished institutions, and even their criminal jurisprudence. Soon after the surrender, a similar petition was, in 1664, renewed to the representative of the duke of York; and, as the parties, heedless of the former grant to Herman, succeeded in obtaining from the Indians a deed of an extensive territory on Newark bay, Nicolls, ignorant as yet of the transfer of New Jersey and having already granted land on Hackensack neck, encouraged emigration by ratifying the sale. The tract afterward became known as "the Elizabethtown purchase," and led to abundant litigation. In April, 1665, a further patent was issued, under the same authority, to William Goulding and others, for the region extending from Sandy Hook to the mouth of the Raritan. For a few months East New Jersey bore the name of Albania. Nicolls could boast that "on the new purchases from the

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Indians three towns were beginning;" and, under grants from the Dutch and from the governor of New York, the coast from the old settlement of Bergen to Sandy Hook, along Newark bay, at Middletown, at Shrewsbury, was enliv ened by humble plantations, that were soon to constitute a semicircle of villages.

In August, 1665, Philip Carteret appeared among the tenants of the scattered cabins, and was quietly received as the governor appointed for the colony by its proprietaries. In vain did Nicolls protest against the division of his province, and struggle to secure for his patron the territory which had been released in ignorance. The incipient people had no motive to second his complaints. A cluster of four houses, which, in honor of the kind-hearted Lady Carteret, was called Elizabethtown, rose into dignity as the capital of the prov

ince.

To New England, messengers were despatched to publish the tidings that Puritan liberties were warranted a shelter on the Raritan. Immediately, in 1666, an association of church members from the New Haven colony sailed into the Passaic, and, at the request of the governor, holding a council with the Hackensack tribe, themselves extinguished the Indian title to Newark. "With one heart, they resolved to carry on their spiritual and town affairs according to godly government; to be ruled under their old laws by officers chosen from among themselves; and when, in May, 1668, a colonial legislative assembly was for the first time convened at Elizabethtown, the influence of Puritans transferred the chief features of the New England codes to the statute-book of New Jersey.

The land was accessible and productive; the temperate climate delighted by its salubrity; there was little danger from the neighboring Indians, whose strength had been broken by long hostilities with the Dutch; the Five Nations guarded the approaches from the interior; and the vicinity of older settlements saved the emigrants from the distresses of a first adventure in the wilderness. Everything was of good augury, till, in 1670, the quit-rents of a halfpenny an acre were seriously spoken of. But, on the subject of real estate in the New World, the Puritans differed from the lawyers widely,

asserting that the heathen, as lineal descendants of Noah, had a rightful claim to their lands. The Indian deeds, executed partly with the approbation of Nicolls, partly with the consent of Carteret himself, were therefore pleaded as superior to proprietary grants; the payment of quit-rents was refused; disputes were followed by confusion; and, in May, 1672, the disaffected colonists, obeying the impulse of independence, sent deputies to a constituent assembly at Elizabethtown. By that body Philip Carteret was displaced, and his office transferred to the young and frivolous James Carteret, a natural son of Sir George. The proprietary officers could make no resistance. William Pardon, who withheld the records, found safety only in flight. Following the advice of the council, after appointing John Berry as his deputy, Philip Carteret repaired to England, in search of new authority, while the colonists remained in the undisturbed possession of their farms.

The liberties of New Jersey did not extend beyond the Delaware; the settlements in New Netherland, on the opposite bank, consisting chiefly of groups of Dutch round Lewistown and Newcastle, and Swedes and Finns at Christiana Creek, at Chester, and near what is now Philadelphia, were retained as a dependency of New York. The claim of Lord Baltimore was denied with pertinacity. In 1672, the people of Maryland, desiring to stretch the boundary of their province to the bay, invaded Lewistown with an armed force. The country was immediately reclaimed, as belonging by conquest to the duke of York; and it still escaped the imminent peril of being absorbed in Maryland.

In respect to civil privileges, Delaware shared the fortunes of New York; and for that province the establishment of English jurisdiction was not followed by the hoped for concessions. Connecticut, in 1664, surrendering all claims to Long Island, obtained a favorable boundary on the main. The city of New York was incorporated, with a mayor who was to be named by the governor; the municipal liberties of Albany were not impaired; but the province had no political franchises, and therefore no political unity. In the governor and his subservient council were vested the executive and the

highest judicial powers; with the court of assizes, composed of justices of his own appointment, holding office at his will, he exercised supreme legislative power, promulgated a code of laws, and modified or repealed them at pleasure. No popular representation, no true English liberty, was sanctioned. Once, indeed, in March, 1665, a convention was held at Hempstead, chiefly for the purpose of settling the respective limits of the towns on Long Island. The rate for public charges was there perhaps agreed upon; and the deputies were induced to sign an extravagantly loyal address to the duke of York. But they were scorned by their constituents for their inconsiderate servility; and the governor, who never again allowed an assembly, was "reproached and vilified" for his arbitrary conduct. The Dutch patents for land were held to require renewal, and Nicolls gathered a harvest of fees from exacting new title-deeds.

Under Lord Lovelace, who, in May, 1667, succeeded him, the same system was more fully developed. In 1669, even the Swedes and Finns, the most patient of all emigrants, were roused to resistance. "The method for keeping the people in order is severity, and laying such taxes as may give them liberty for no thought but how to discharge them:" such was the remedy proposed in the instructions from Lovelace to his southern subordinate, and carried into effect by an arbitrary tariff.

In New York, where the established powers of the towns favored the demand for freedom, eight villages, in October of 1669, united in remonstrating against the arbitrary government; they demanded the promised legislation by annual assemblies. But absolute government was the settled policy of the royal proprietary; and taxation for purposes of defence, by the decree of the governor, was the next experiment. In 1670, the towns of Southold, Southampton, and Easthampton, expressed themselves willing to contribute, if they might enjoy the privileges of the New England colonies. The people of Huntington refused altogether; for, said they, "we are deprived of the liberties of Englishmen." The people of Jamaica declared the decree of the governor a dis franchisement, contrary to the laws of the English nation.

Flushing and Hempstead were equally resolute. The votes of the several towns were presented to the governor and council; they were censured as "scandalous, illegal, and seditious, alienating the peaceable from their duty and obedience,' and, according to the established precedents of tyranny, were ordered to be publicly burnt before the town-house of New York.

It was easy to burn the votes which the yeomanry of Long Island had passed in their town-meetings. But, meantime, the forts were not put in order; the government of the duke of York was hated; and when, in the next war between England and the Netherlands, a small Dutch squadron, commanded by the gallant Evertsen, of Zealand, in July, 1673, approached Manhattan, the city surrendered within four hours; the people of New Jersey made no resistance; and the counties on the Delaware, recovering greater privileges than they had enjoyed, cheerfully followed the example. The Mohawk chiefs congratulated their brethren on the recovery of their colony. "We have always," said they, "been as one flesh. If the French come down from Canada, we will join with the Dutch nation, and live and die with them;" and the words of love were confirmed by a belt of wampum. New York was once more a province of the Netherlands.

The nation of merchants and manufacturers had just achieved its independence of Spain and given to the Protestant world the leading example of a federal republic, when its mariners took possession of the Hudson. The country was now reconquered, at a time when the provinces, single-handed, were again struggling for existence against yet more powerful antagonists. France, supported by the bishops of Munster and Cologne, had succeeded in involving England in a conspiracy for the political destruction of England's commercial rival. Charles II. had begun hostilities as a pirate; and Louis XIV. did not disguise the purpose of conquest. In 1673, with armies amounting to two hundred thousand men, to which the Netherlands could oppose only twenty thousand, the French monarch invaded the republic; and, within a month, it was exposed to the same desperate dangers which had been encountered a century be