Conceived in Liberty (58 page)

As proprietors of New Jersey, Berkeley and Carteret were anxious to promote rapid colonization. Hence, in February 1665 they promulgated the liberal Concessions and Agreements, which granted religious freedom to the inhabitants and which offered one hundred fifty acres of land for each indentured servant brought over—subject to quitrents of one-half pence per acre to the proprietors. Each servant, upon completing his term, was to receive seventy-five acres of land. Furthermore, the concessions granted the right of freeholders to form their own representative assembly. The governor and council were to be appointed by the proprietary, but no taxes could be levied without the approval of the assembly. (These particular provisions were virtually identical with the abortive Concessions and Agreements promulgated by the Carolina proprietary six weeks earlier.) Appointed as first governor of New Jersey was Philip Carteret, a distant relative of the proprietor. Carteret set up his capital at the new settlement of Elizabethtown. Attracted by the guarantee of religious liberty and by the open land, New Englanders soon poured into New Jersey, adding such settlements as Piscataway, Woodbridge, Middletown, and Shrewsbury to the older Dutch town of Bergen, which included Pavonia and Hoboken. In particular, many citizens of New Haven, disgruntled at the seizure by Connecticut, came to New Jersey. The Reverend Abraham Pierson, the arch-Calvinist minister of Branford, led his
flock, as we have seen, to found New Ark. Attempting to duplicate the theocracy of New Haven, they provided in the town constitution that only Puritan church members could vote.

Meanwhile, after temporarily leaving the Dutch officials in office, Governor Nicolls of New York drew up, for the largely English-speaking district of Yorkshire, a set of fundamental laws known as the “Duke’s Laws.” The Duke’s Laws did not grant anything like the degree of representative government achieved in the other English colonies. There was no elected assembly. Instead, the legislative power was exercised by a Court of Assizes, a body of judges appointed by and subject to the veto of the governor. On the other hand, trial by jury was introduced into a colony that did not have the safeguard before. The Anglican church was now established, with the church supported in each town, but freedom of conscience was granted to all of the sects. Neither were there any town meetings of the old New England model, but the towns were allowed to elect a ruling constable and a board of eight overseers, who were, however, accountable to the governor. The patroons were confirmed in their domains, now called “manors,” and the militia was to be under the control of the provincial government.

In general, we may say that the Duke’s Laws were more liberal than the old despotic Dutch rule, but far inferior to New England’s. For the Long Island towns, used to a considerable amount of self-government, the Duke’s Laws were a decidedly backward step. In March 1665 a convention of thirty-four delegates from seventeen Yorkshire towns of Westchester and Long Island (thirteen English and four Dutch) was called to approve the Duke’s Laws. The Long Islanders, who had been promised by Nicolls their original New England town autonomy and a popular, self-governing assembly, were understandably bitter at this about-face. However, to their great regret, the convention finally gave its approval to the laws. But the Long Island townsmen continued to balk, and to object bitterly to what they believed to be a betrayal by their own deputies. John Underhill attacked the new laws as “arbitrary power.” They also objected vehemently to Nicolls’ decree forcing all settlers and landowners in the province to pay a fee to the government to have their land titles reconfirmed. The object of the government was not only to obtain the fine, but to force the lands to enter the rolls to become subject to payment of quitrents. So strong were the protests that the new Court of Assizes decreed that anyone criticizing the Hempstead deputies would be punished for “slander.” Three protesters from Flushing and Jamaica were duly fined and placed into the stocks. The townsmen even practiced a form of nonviolent resistance, refusing to accept the governor’s appointments as town constables. The governor finally imposed a fine of five pounds to force the appointees to accept their posts.

Flushing was in such a rebellious state in 1667 that Nicolls finally disbanded its militia and disarmed all of its citizens. And so bitter were the Long Island towns about reconfirming their land titles for a fee, and for subjection
to quitrents, that they did not confirm the titles for the entire first decade of English rule. These New Englanders had always been able to own their land in full without having to pay feudal quitrents.

Another deep economic grievance of the Long Islanders was Nicolls’ attempt to enforce the payment of customs taxes on direct trade with Long Island—a threat that was countered by extensive smuggling. Nicolls’ attempt included the hated appointment of a deputy collector of customs for Long Island to supplement the collector at New York City.

In New York City a similar but even less democratic system was imposed; all the municipal officials were appointed annually by the governor. The English offices of mayor, alderman, and sheriff replaced such Dutch posts as the
Koopman
and the
Schout-Fiscal.
The Dutch population of the city protested this arbitrary rule at length and asked at least for the right of the judicial and legislative New York City Council to present two lists, from which the governor would have to choose the next council. This concession was finally granted in 1669. In 1668 the Duke’s Laws were extended to Delaware and to the remainder of New York, excluding such predominantly Dutch areas as Kingston, Albany, and the new western settlement of Schenectady, where the Dutch laws and institutions were allowed to remain.

During the second Anglo-Dutch War of 1664–67, in which the French took the side of the Dutch, Nicolls, as the king’s spokesman in America, called repeatedly for joint New York-New England action against Dutch and French America. But New England and especially Massachusetts pursued a wise course of peace and neutrality. In February 1666 England, joined by Nicolls, instructed the New England colonies to organize an expedition for the purpose of seizing Canada from the French. But the New Englanders stalled and the project came to nothing, much to the annoyance of Governor Nicolls, who had to be content with depriving the Dutch citizens, the great majority of the population of the province, of all their arms.

The Dutch citizens suffered considerable grievances from the English troops, especially during the war. Nicolls imposed heavier taxes upon them to maintain these troops, and billeted the troops in the homes of the unwilling Dutch burghers. Tax delinquency rose sharply during the war period, and when Nicolls requested aid in fortifying New York City, the Dutch balked so long as their own arms were not returned to them—certainly a telling point. Even Governor Nicolls recognized that the English soldiers tended to treat the Dutch citizens very badly. One important incident occurred at the Dutch town of Esopus (now Kingston) in 1667. Here the English Captain Brodhead ruled the citizenry in high-handed and dictatorial fashion. One time, Brodhead denounced a man for celebrating Christmas in the Dutch rather than in the Anglican manner. Finally, Brodhead refused to obey the wish of the civil authorities of the town to set a certain prisoner free. When the Kingstonians protested, Captain Brodhead threatened to burn down the town. The threat was enough to cause a riot, and finally an
attack on Brodhead; a Dutchman was killed in the melee by one of Brodhead’s troop. The governor then stepped in to suspend Brodhead and also punish the leading Dutch resisters.

The Dutch citizens of New York City also had an important economic grievance, and good reason to deem themselves economically betrayed by the new regime. In the surrender treaty of New Netherland, the English had made various promises that trade with Holland and in Dutch ships would continue freely. But this was in direct conflict with the English Navigation Acts. What was to be done? Nicolls at first allowed a few selected New York merchants to trade with Holland. After the war was over, agitation for permission to trade with Holland was renewed. To avoid a decline in the Indian fur trade (the Indians preferred Dutch goods), and wholesale emigration by the Dutch citizens, Nicolls persuaded the Duke of York in 1667 to permit Dutch trade with New York. And yet, in late 1668, this right was abruptly canceled, despite strong protests from the Dutch officials of the city government, as contradictory to basic English imperial policy.

*
John Fiske,
The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America,
1:289.

By the mid-1660s the enormous impact of the Restoration crisis in the northern colonies was over, and the colonies began to settle down to their changed conditions. In New England, Connecticut, and Rhode Island not only self-governing remained, but confirmation of this role was won by royal charter. Rhode Island also retained its control over Narrangansett Country despite Connecticut’s attempted seizure. Connecticut succeeded in seizing and annexing the Colony of New Haven, thus eliminating the last major bastion of Calvinist ultraorthodoxy in New England. Massachusetts triumphed over the attempts of the royal commission to bring it to heel, and it remained defiant and self-governing. The Maine towns were organized into a separate government by the commissioners, but they were soon reannexed by Massachusetts Bay. But the rigid rule of the Massachusetts theocratic oligarchy was steadily weakening from within as the more liberal merchants rose to greater influence with the rise of Boston as a crucial trade center of New England. The Half-Way Covenant demonstrated the weakening of the Puritan zeal of the younger generation of the Bay Colony, and the persecution of the Quakers was virtually over.

In the Middle Colonies, the critical event was the almost bloodless seizure of New Netherland by the English, and its transformation into the proprietary colony of New York, owned by the Duke of York. The province included the district of New Castle (now Delaware) but the intermediary area of New Jersey was granted to two of the Duke’s favorites, who introduced a representative government far more liberal than that of New York in order to encourage rapid settlement. And the principle of religious liberty, Quakers included, spread through the colonies upon its triumph in New York and New Jersey.

The accession of English rule in New York touched off the second Anglo-Dutch War (1664–67), and the Treaty of Breda (July 1667) formally ceded
New Netherland to England. Free trade between New York and Holland was also agreed upon for a seven-year period. Nicolls’ successor as governor, Col. Francis Lovelace, won the approval of the people in 1668 by abolishing New York City’s two social castes, created by Peter Stuyvesant a decade before. These were the “great burghers” (including government officials, officers of the militia, ministers, and others paying fifty guilders into the city treasury) and the “small burghers” (including all others in the city, and strangers paying a fee of twenty-five guilders). Only great burghers had been eligible for public office and had been exempt from certain penalties in criminal cases. The abolition of this caste system was applauded, but the conflict with the Long Island towns continued and intensified. New York was now the only colony imposing taxes without the consent of a representative assembly, and the New Englanders on Long Island were used to far better treatment. And as we have seen, the Long Islanders deeply resented the requirement of paying customs duties at the same rate as New York City. In addition, they protested bitterly a tax that was levied on them in 1670 by Governor Lovelace to pay for repairs to the fort on Manhattan— formerly Fort Amsterdam, now Fort James. The Long Island towns drew up a remonstrance at Huntington that declared their refusal to pay such a tax and that rested their case on the time-honored principle of English liberties and of “no taxation without representation.” We have seen that a similar tax protest had wrung representative government (albeit an oligarchic one) from Massachusetts in 1631; but now the resistance was dealing with royal authority. Lovelace denounced the protest as seditious, ordered the signers prosecuted, and had the petition publicly burned at the city hall. And the people, who had so recently been promised “English liberties” instead of arbitrary Dutch rule, were now told that their “liberty” should consist of thinking of nothing but “how to pay taxes.”

In 1673 the embittered eastern Long Island towns of Southampton, Southold, and East Hampton petitioned the king for separate English charters for themselves. These rejected, they asked the king, unsuccessfully, to be allowed to return to the jurisdiction of Connecticut. Their reasons: the lack of a representative assembly, the lower tax rates in Connecticut, and their natural trading ties with New England (including exchange of Long Island whale oil for New England goods).

Another cause of discontent lay in New York City. There the government organized the cartmen into a monopoly cartel or guild: the guild was granted the monopoly of the carting business in the city. In return, the carters were forced to work for the city one day a week. As guaranteed monopolists, the cartmen naturally felt that they no longer had to supply their customers with efficient or courteous service; and the courts of the city tried to correct the matter by threatening to allow nonguild carters to operate. But these threats did not overcome the unfortunate consequences of the government’s original intervention: the guild monopoly.

In New Jersey the new settlers from New England, used to democratic self-government, quickly began chafing at the rule of Governor Philip
Carteret. Even though the regime was far more liberal than New York’s, this was the New Englanders’ first encounter with a proprietary governor and his appointed Council, able to veto their decisions. When New Jersey’s first Assembly opened in 1668, trouble began almost immediately as the people of Middletown repudiated the election of their deputies, asserting that it was invalid. Their basic complaint was that the deputies, John Bowne (not the same Bowne who had led the protest in Flushing) and James Grover, violated their liberties by voting for an onerous five-pound tax on townships. Middletown rested its legal case on a land grant that had been made to it by Governor Nicolls, before the proprietary grant of New Jersey to Berkeley and Carteret had become known. Middletown then chose two others as their successors, and the nearby townsmen of Shrewsbury selected still others to replace Bowne and Grover, who had also represented them. But Middletown and Shrewsbury insisted that their representatives add to their oath of allegiance the proviso that they could recognize the validity of no act impinging on the liberties of their original patent, which included a seven-year exemption from township taxes.