USA > New Jersey > The history of New Jersey : from its earliest settlement to the present time : including a brief historical account of the first discoveries and settlement of the country, Vol. I > Part 15
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38
In the eleventh month of this year, the council of proprietors for the western division, met in accordance with their usual practice.
. There were present at this meeting William Biddle, Samuel Jennings, (President) George Deacon, John Wills, William Hall, Christopher Wetherill, and John Kay.
Cornbury sent an order to this council, and proposed certain measures which he desired them to take action upon, but which, for some reasons, they delayed action thereon; but in the spring of the following year, 1707, he sent for the council of
*Out of this sum Lieutenant-Governor Ingolsby received six hundred pounds.
175
HISTORY OF NEW JERSEY.
proprietors to meet him at Burlington, at which meeting he proposed a number of questions to them, on the same subject as he had previously, and demanded a positive answer to each.
The only satisfaction he received from them, was a summary of their constitution and establishment, a copy of which they sent him, as an answer to the three questions propounded by him to them .*
In their answer they put forth the questions propounded, which were as follows :
I. Who were the council of proprietors of last year, and who were chosen for this year, 1707, and to have the names of them?
2. What are the powers the said council pretend to have ?
3. By whom constituted ?
" They replied, that the persons chosen for the last year to serve the proprietors as agents or trustees, were William Biddle, Samuel Jennings, George Deacon, John Wills, and Christopher Wetherill, for the county of Burlington ; and John Reading, Francis Collings, John Kay, and William Hall, of Salem, for the county of Gloucester and below ; and for the present year, 1707, William Biddle, Samuel Jennings, Lewis Morris, George Deacon, John Wills, John Kay, John Reading, Thomas Gardiner, and William Hall, of Salem.
In answer to the second question, they state that in the year 1677, the first ship came there from England, which brought the first inhabitants that came to settle in these remote parts. By virtue of Byllinge's right, before she sailed the proprietors met together in London to settle some certain method how the pur- chasers of land from Byllinge and others should have their just rights laid forth to them, and selected Joseph Helmsley, William Emley, John Penford, Benjamin Scott, Daniel Wills, Thomas Olive and Robert Stacy, as commissioners, empowering them to purchase what lands they could from the Indians, and to inspect
* This was delivered to Cornbury in council, on the 30th of the eleventh month. The proprietors then present were Samuel Jennings, William Hall, Thomas Gardiner, John Wills, John Kay, Christopher Wetherill, and Lewis Morris. With this answer, they delivered to the governor and council two papers containing the names of several of the proprietors, declaring the appro- bation of the council, and one Indian deed.
176
HISTORY OF NEW JERSEY.
all rights as any lands were claimed, and when satisfied to order the laying out of the same, which they accordingly did.
Some of them being compelled to return to England, the management of their rights was assumed by the assembly, and so continued until 1687, when they relinquished it, and on the 14th of February of that year, the proprietors met at Burlington and chose and elected eleven persons from among themselves to act for the whole for the next ensuing year, (this was subse- quently changed to nine) who accordingly ratified the constitu- tion ; since which time the same method had been practised, and no evil results had arisen from it, but on the contrary great advantage had been the result to the proprietors.
The powers of those that are now and have been all along, they are the same with the first that came over from England in 1677. As to the constitution of said agents, trustees or committee, and by whom constituted, it is on certain days in the county of Burlington and Gloucester, yearly and every year, they are chosen by the proprietors.
The above was substantially the report they made to his Ex- cellency.
They concluded by saying : " The above is as good an account as we that are present are able to give, in answer to what was required of us by your lordship, and pray it may find acceptance as such, but if any other thing may seem needful to be answered, we humbly pray it may for this time be suspended, till the whole can be got together."
The writs for the new assembly were returnable to Burlington, April 5th, 1707.
It was soon manifest in this assembly that Cornbury had not the success in elections as in the former choice. His conduct having been arbitrary, the people were dissatisfied.
The assembly chose Samuel Jennings, speaker, received the governor's speech, and soon after resolved themselves into a committee of the whole house to consider grievances. This committee continued sitting from day to day, till at last they passed fifteen resolutions, which they laid before the Queen, together with a petition, on the 8th day of May. They also remonstrated their grievances to the governor.
· 177
HISTORY OF NEW JERSEY.
This remonstrance contained much of a history of the times, and though things were carried to arbitrary lengths, there were not wanting in the province men of discernment to see and lament the unhappy situation of their country, and of spirit to oppose its greatest enemies; several of such were in this assembly, prominent among whom was the speaker .* He had very early known New Jersey, had lived in it through various changes and amid commotions, and had seen great alterations in it. Being largely concerned in public transactions, he knew what belonged to a public character. He had governed the western part of the province for several years, with integrity and reputation. He saw the advantages of a just confidence, and that this was the only way to acquire it. That though the office was in itself respectable, it was the honest execution of it that added to its dignity, produced the intended service, and secured the appro- bation of a kind but watchful mistress, who desired nothing but the welfare of her subjects, for such Queen Anne was ever found to be.
Jennings was also undaunted, and Lord Cornbury on his part, exacted the utmost decorum. While as speaker he was delivering the remonstrance, the governor frequently interrupted him with a stop, " What's that," &c., at the same time putting on a coun- tenance of authority and sternness, the intention of which evidently was to confound him.
With due submission, yet firmness, whenever interrupted, he camly desired leave to read the passages over again, and did it with additional emphasis upon those most complaining, so that on the second reading they became more observable than at first.t
' He at length got through, when the governor told the house to attend him again on Saturday next, at eleven o'clock, to receive his answer.
He did not, however, get ready with it until the 12th, when, sending for the house, he delivered it.
* Lewis Morris also now distinguished himself in behalf of privilege, and exercised a large share in the whole conduct of this assembly.
t After the house had adjourned, Cornbury, with some emotion, told those that were with him, that Jennings had impudence enough to face the devil.
M
178
HISTORY OF NEW JERSEY.
· The governor was surrogate-general, and before him all wills were admitted to probate, and this was one of the grievances the assembly complained of, as the governor resided at New York, and very seldom came into the province ; in fact he admits in his answer, that he had only been there twice during the . year, once at Burlington, and once at Amboy. He had, how- ever, appointed a surrogate at Burlington, before whom any of the inhabitants of either division might have their wills proved.
The' reply of the governor to the assembly's remonstrance, was a lengthy document, and in it he endeavored to answer the charges made by them.
The assembly did not, however, immediately reply to the governor, having the treasurer's, Peter Fauconier's, accounts to settle, in which they found many articles of an extraordinary nature, several of them having been paid by Cornbury's order merely, and the whole without vouchers. They therefore sent for the treasurer, and he came before them, but refused to pro- . duce his vouchers without the governor's commands.
Two members were sent to the governor, to request him to order the treasurer to lay the vouchers before them. The reply of the governor was that he had already ordered it, though he had no legal right to do so, because the lord high treasurer had appointed an auditor-general for the province, and he not being in it, had deputed one to audit the accounts, and that the treasurer was accountable only to the lord high treasurer. But if the house was dissatisfied with any of the articles in the account, and thought proper to apply to him, he would satisfy them. This was not, however, done, and the accounts, extraor- dinary as they were, remained unsettled till Governor Hunter's administration, several years after.
Several bills of considerable importance were now under con- sideration, but Cornbury, apprehensive that if he suffered the session to continue much longer it might be productive of something greatly to his disadvantage, so on the 16th he adjourned the house to meet at Amboy the September following.
They did not, however, meet till October, and the first thing they concluded on, was a reply to the answer of the governor to their remonstrance, after which they resolved that they would
179
HISTORY OF NEW JERSEY.
raise no money till the governor consented to redress the griev- ances of the country, which, if he did, they would raise one thousand five hundred pounds, for the support of the govern- ment for one year.
On the 28th, the house sent a committee to acquaint the governor that having seen his answer to their remonstrance in print, they thought it their duty to make a reply to .it, and desired to know when he would admit them to wait on him with it.
The governor replied that he would return them an answer in due time. They waited for his message until the next day, and then concluding that he intended not to give them an oppor- tunity of presenting it, sent a committee with it, and ordered it to be entered in full in their journal.
They told him "it were needless to hunt after imaginary grievances, as real ones in too great numbers present themselves, and though from you we have missed of obtaining that relief that the justice of our complaints entitled us to, yet we do not despair of being heard by Her Sacred Majesty, at whose royal feet we shall, in the humblest manner, lay an account of our suffer- ings, and however contemptible we are, or are endeavored to be made appear, we are persuaded Her Majesty will consider us as the representatives of the province of New Jersey, who must better know what are the grievances of the country they repre- sent, than a governor can do, who regularly ought to receive information of that kind from them, and we do not doubt that glorious Queen, will make her subjects here as easy and happy as she can.
" When we told Your Excellency, we had reason to think some of our sufferings were very much owing to Your Excellency's long absence from this province, which rendered it very difficult to apply to your lordship in some cases that might need a present help, we spoke truth And notwithstanding all Your Excellency has said of a month's or twelve weeks being here in a year, and the weekly going of a post, we cannot be persuaded to believe that nine months and upwards, in a year, is not a long absence, especially when the seal of the province is carried and kept out of the government all that time, and the Honorable Colonel
180
HISTORY OF NEW JERSEY.
Ingolsby, the lieutenant-governor, so far from doing right, that he declined doing any act of government at all. Whether he governs himself by Your Excellency's directions or not, we cannot tell. But sure we are, that this province, being as it were without government for above nine months in a year, we must still think it a"great grievance, and not made less so by carrying the seal of the province to New York.
"We are apt to believe, upon the credit of Your Excellency's assertion, that there may be a number of people in the province who will never be faithful to, or live quietly under, any govern- ment, nor suffer their neighbors to enjoy any peace, quiet, nor happiness, if they can help it. Such people are pests in all government, have ever been so in this, and we know of none who can lay a fairer claim to these characters, than many of Your Excellency's favorites."
One of the complaints of the assembly was, that some persons under sentence of death for murder, have not only remained until this time unexecuted (they having been condemned not long after Lord Cornbury's accession to the government), but often have been suffered to go at large ; one of those persons is a woman that murdered her own child, another a woman that poisoned her husband. The keeping of them so long has been a very great charge. The blood of these innocents cries aloud for vengeance, and just Heaven will not fail to pour it down upon our already miserable country, if they are not made to suffer according to their demerits.
To this Cornbury answered .: " Two women that have been condemned for murdering, have not been executed, there having appeared most notorious malice and revenge in some people who were zealous in their prosecutions. The Queen is the fountain of honor, justice and mercy, and as she is so, she may, when she pleases, exert her mercy, either in reprieving or par- doning the criminal. That power of pardoning and reprieving, after condemnation, the subjects of this province, Her Majesty has been pleased to entrust me with, and I am no ways account- able to any person or number of persons whatsoever, for what I do in those matters, but to the Queen's Majesty alone."
To this the assembly again replies :
18I
HISTORY OF NEW JERSEY.
" What malice and revenge were in the prosecution of the condemned persons, we don't know.
"We never heard of any till now, and hardly can be per- suaded to believe it's possible there should be in both instances.
"It is not impossible, there might be malice in the prosecu- tion of the woman who was condemned for poisoning her husband, there not being, as is said, plain proof of the fact, but it was proved she had attempted it before more than once, and there were so many other concurring circumstances as did induce the jury, who were of the neighborhood, and well knew her character, to find her guilty, and it is hardly probable their so doing was an act of malice.
" The woman who murdered her own child, did it in such a manner, and so publicly, that it is unreasonable to suppose there could be any malice in the prosecution of her, and we cannot think, notwithstanding Your Excellency's assertions, that you can or may believe there was. This woman was a prisoner in the sheriff's custody for breach of the peace, and going about some of the household affairs the sheriff employed her in, with a knife in her hand, her child, who was something forward, followed her, crying, upon which the mother turned back to it and cut its throat ; but not having cut it deep enough, the child still followed her, all bloody, and crying ' O! mother, you have hurt me,' the mother turned back a second time, and cut it effectually, and then took it up and carried it to the sheriff, or his wife, at whose feet she laid it. How far such a wretch is entitled to the Queen's favor, Her Majesty can best tell, when she is made acquainted with the fact, but sure we are, she never gave Your Excellency the power of pardoning willful murder. Whether Your Excellency has or has not reprieved them, you best know, and are only accountable to Her Majesty for your procedures therein, though we have too much reason to believe, the favorable opinion Your Excellency has so publicly expressed of her, has been a great reason to induce her to make her escape, which she has done."
Cornbury, contrary to all law or custom, assumed to be the judge of the qualifications of the members of the assembly, and dictated to them whether they should be received or not, which
182
HISTORY OF NEW JERSEY.
they, in their address to the Queen, stigmatized as a direct con- tradiction to the very nature and being of assemblies, and which, if allowed, would render the liberties, lives and properties of the people entirely at the disposal of the executive, which was never intended by Her Majesty. The house was therefore compelled, in order to sustain its dignity, to take notice of a procedure which would tend to destroy the very being of assemblies by ren- dering them the tools of a governor's arbitrary pleasure, and the enemies instead of the preservers of the liberties of the country.
Her Majesty's loyal subjects were taken to jails, and there allowed to remain without being admitted to bail. Several of Her Majesty's good subjects were forced to abscond and leave their habitations, being threatened with imprisonment, and no hopes of receiving the benefit of the law, when the absolute will of the governor is the sole measure of it.
They set forth that " one minister of the Church of England was dragged by a sheriff from Burlington to Amboy, and there kept in custody, without any reason having been assigned for it, and was at last hauled by force into a boat by his Excellency, and transported like a malefactor into another government, and there kept in a garrison a prisoner, without any reason being assigned for these violent procedures but the pleasure of his excellency.
" Another minister of the Church of England was laid under the necessity of leaving the province, from the reasonable appre- hensions of meeting with the same treatment. No orders of men, either sacred or civil, were secure in their lives, their liberties or estates, under Cornbury's arbitrary rule."
They then go on to say : " If these, and what we have named before, be acts of mercy, gentleness and good nature ; if this be doing for the good, welfare and prosperity of the people of this province ; if this be the administering laws for the protection and preservation of Her Majesty's subjects, then have we been the most mistaken men in the world, and have had the falsest notion of things, calling that cruelty, oppression and injustice, which are their direct opposites, and these things slavery, impri- sonment and hardships, which are freedom, liberty and ease, and must henceforth take France, Denmark, the Muscovian, Otto-
183
HISTORY OF NEW JERSEY.
man and Eastern empires, to be the best models of a gentle and happy government."
The western proprietors resid ng in England had resented Cornbury's treatment of the inhabitants, especially in relation to the three members being kept out of the assembly, by which he secured a majority devoted to his measures. They issued a memorial to the right honorable the Lords Commissioners for trade and plantations, dated November 15th, 1704, in which they acknowledge the justness of the commissioners in making the terms of the surrender of government part of Lord Cornbury's instructions relating to the province, and regretted that his Ex- cellency had not given them occasion to acknowledge his due observance of these instructions instead of their having to trouble them with a complaint of his breach of them.
They assert that the instructions in regard to representatives and electors, which was relied upon by them as the chief security of their estates in that province, his Excellency not only violated but totally destroyed that part of the constitution in such a man- ner as to render all assemblies a mere piece of formality, and only the tools of a governor's arbitrary pleasure.
Their memorial was quite a lengthy document, but as most of the matters contained in it have been before introduced, we deem it unnecessary to quote more at length.
Two days after Cornbury had refused to receive the assembly's reply he sent for them, and though several important bills were unfinished, adjourned the house to the spring of the following year. Not having received the reply in form, he escaped the necessity of attempting to clear up what he could not do with justice and equity. Some of the glaring facts still confirmed the truth of the charges against him. He thought he had a more effectual way of dealing, which was, to lodge a complaint with the Queen, and to accomplish his ends he procured his trusty friend Ingolsby, the lieutenant-governor, with some of the council, to sign and privately transmit an address to her.
This address was signed by Richard Ingolsby, William Pin- horne, R. Mompeson, Thomas Revell, Daniel Leeds, Daniel Coxe, Richard Townley, Robert Quarry, and William Sandford. It set forth, " that the lieutenant-governor and council (although
184
HISTORY OF NEW JERSEY.
it was signed by only eight of the council out of twenty-four,) while the petition of the West Jersey proprietors alone was signed by eighteen of the proprietors residing in England, and the remonstrance was signed by the speaker in behalf of the majority of the assembly, who adopted it nemine contradicente, (without opposition of the minority) of Your Majesty's province of Nova Casaria or New Jersey, having seriously and deliber- ately taken into consideration the proceedings of the present assembly or representative body of this province, thought our- selves bound, both in duty and conscience, to testify to Your Majesty our dislike and abhorrence of the same, being very sensible that the unaccountable honors and pernicious designs of some particular men,* have put themselves upon so many irregularities, with intention only to occasion divisions and dis- tractions, to the disturbance of the great and weighty affairs which both Your Majesty's honor and dignity, as well as peace and welfare, of the country required. Their high encroachments upon Your Majesty's prerogative royal ; notorious violations of the rights and liberties of the subjects; manifest interruptions of justice and most unmannerly treatment of his Excellency Lord Cornbury, would have induced us sooner to have discharged our duty to Your Majesty, in giving a full representation of the unhappy circumstances of this Your Majesty's province and government, had we not been in hopes that His Excellency, the Lord Cornbury's, full and ample answer to a most scandalous libel, called the remonstrance of the assembly of Nova Casaria, or New Jersey, which was delivered to the governor by the assembly at Burlington in May last, would have opened the eyes of the assembly and brought them back to their reason and duty ; but finding that these few turbulent and uneasy spirits in the assemblyt have still been able to influence and amuse the judg- ments of many well-meaning men in that body, as appears by a late scandalous and infamous libel called, "The reply of the house of representatives of the province of New Jersey, to an
* The assembly representing the whole people.
t He stigmatizes them as few, when they were two-thirds of the entire assembly, representing in the same ratio, the people of the province.
185
HISTORY OF NEW JERSEY.
answer made by His Excellency, Edward Viscount Cornbury, governor of the said province, to the humble remonstrance of the aforesaid house. We are now obliged humbly to represent to Your Majesty the true cause which we conceive may lead to the remedy of these confusions.
"The first is owing to the turbulent, factious, uneasy, and disloyal principles of two men in that assembly, Mr. Lewis Morris, and Samuel Jennings, a quaker ;* men notoriously known to be uneasy under all government ; men never known to be consistent with themselves ; men to whom all the factions and confusions in the government of New Jersey and Pennsylvania for many years are wholly owing ; men that have had the confidence to declare in open council that Your Majesty's instructions to your governors in these provinces shall not oblige or bind them, nor will they be concluded by them further than they are warranted by law, of which also they will be the judges. And this is done by them (as we have all reason in the world to believe) to encourage not only this government, but also the rest of your governments in America, to throw off Your Majesty's royal prerogative, and consequently to involve your dominions in this part of the world, and the honest, good and well meaning people in them, in confusion, hoping thereby to obtain their wicked purposes.
" The remedy for all these evils, we most humbly propose, is, that Your Majesty will most graciously please to discountenance these wicked, designing men, and show some dislike to this assembly's proceedings, who are resolved neither to support this Your Majesty's government by a revenue, nor take care to defend it by settling a militia.
. "The last libel, called ' the reply, &c.,' came out so suddenly, t that as we have yet had no time to answer it in all its particulars, but do assure Your Majesty it is for the most part false in facts, and that part of it which carries any face of truth, they have been malicious and unjust in not mentioning the whole truth,
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.