Conceived in Liberty (86 page)

Finally, to complete the litany of counterrevolutionary statism imposed by the Winthrop regime, a law of 1699 established the Puritan or Congregational church in each town. Every taxpayer was now forced to pay for its maintenance, and new churches could be formed only on permission of the General Court. New public schools were also forced upon the colony.
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With support increasing for Fitch, and with Winthrop kept busy for the next decade in defending Connecticut’s charter, there was no time for further changes of this type in Connecticut. But the damage had been done. Furthermore, the main result of the Board of Trade’s assault on Connecticut was to force the colony to agree to the right of appeal, in judicial decisions, to the Crown.

Moreover, the statist Winthrop program was not yet ended. For when Winthrop died in 1707, he was succeeded by his chief adviser, Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall, who proceeded, in the Saybrook Platform of 1708, to organize the Puritan churches into a tight Presbyterian system. If a community is to have a state-run church, it is far easier for the state to control a centrally governed church than one of independent congregations. So Connecticut transformed its Puritan churches, halfway between truly Congregational and Presbyterian forms, into a fully Presbyterian structure. The legislature convoked a synod of ministers and elders at Saybrook, which adopted the new regime. The General Court then imposed the system, taking care to allow religious liberty to Dissenters provided their churches were licensed
by the state. From then on, only a minister legally recognized by the General Court could receive state support.

It was also in Saltonstall’s regime that Connecticut threw itself into expensive attempts to carry the war to Canada. During the long tenure of Rev. Mr. Saltonstall the oligarchic faction became cemented in the colony; here was the beginning of Connecticut’s later reputation as a “land of steady habits.”

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Professor Dunn’s comments on Winthrop’s reactionary “reforms” are more favorable, but provide correct insight into the facts; for example: “By curbing the colonists’ undisciplined, anarchic [that is, individualistic] behavior, he [Winthrop] could meet charges from the Board of Trade that Connecticut’s government was inadequate and irregular. The reforms were particularly designed to break James Fitch’s democratic faction” (Dunn,
Puritans and Yankees,
P. 323).

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.