was evoking supernatural aid They watched and shuddered with fear. Then came the powerful wind, bending and breaking trees, the rush of rain and the crashing thunders. The horses were mad with terror, and started at a furious pace over the ground that is now called Witch Trot. The party came out at length upon the river safely, and Burroughs with them, who had no desire to escape; but the constables on the day of his trial added their testimony to

Later attempts to

revive the witchcraft excitement.

Burroughs and the Sheriffs.

made in Littleton, Massachusetts, to revive the witchcraft delusion, but it proved abortive. But the old Scotch ordeal for discovering witches by throwing the accused into the water, when the innocent one would sink, not much to her personal advantage, was tried in the eighteenth century at an inlet of Lynnhaven Bay, Virginia, called "Witch-Duck."

When the curtain had fallen upon the Salem tragedy, Cotton Mather undertook to sum up the matter and vindicate his share in it. This superficial and ambitious divine wrote thus: "It may be

1692.]

COTTON MATHER'S VINDICATION.

471

that errors on both sides have attended them [the troubles] which will never be understood until the day when Satan shall Mather's be bound after another manner than he is at this day; but vindication. for my own part, I know not that ever I have advanced any opinion in the matter of witchcraft, but what all the ministers of the Lord that I know of in the world, whether English or Scotch, or French or Dutch, are of the same opinion with me.'

CHAPTER XX.

COLONIZATION BY FRIENDS.

PROGRESS OF NEW JERSEY. - INSURRECTION UNDER JAMES CARTERET. CHANGES IN THE NEW JERSEY TITLES. THE "QUINTIPARTITE DEED."— DIVISION INTO EAST AND WEST JERSEY. PROSPERITY OF WEST JERSEY UNDER QUAKER RULE. CONFLICTS OF JURISDICTION. THE QUAKERS BUY EAST JERSEY. EARLIEST CONNECTION OF WILLIAM PENN WITH AMERICAN COLONIZATION. LIFE AND CHARACTER OF PENN. - THE GRANT OF PENNSYLVANIA. EARLY SETTLERS. — PENN IN AMERICA. -PHILADELPHIA Founded.· -THE TREATY AT SHACKAMAXON. -PENN'S RETURN TO ENGLAND. PROGRESS OF THE COLONY.- PENN AGAIN AT PHILADELPHIA.

-

THE new Proprietors of New Jersey had no reason to complain of Progress of any want of progress and prosperity in their colony for the New Jersey. first few years after it came into their possession. The constitution of government which they had established was acceptable to the people; the climate and the soil were attractive; the vicinity to older colonies made it easy to supply the wants of those who should settle in it, exempt from the privations and hardships which necessarily attend a settlement in an isolated wilderness. Such representations brought emigrants from England; the enterprising and discontented in New England, whether desirous of more room, or restless for political or religious reasons, saw, or thought they saw, that they could better their condition by a removal to the new province. The first towns grew rapidly; others were begun. The axe and the plough, in the hands of sturdy farmers, everywhere encroached upon the primeval forests and the virgin soil.

Trouble over rents and titles.

But when, in 1670, the first quit-rents were demanded by the Proprietors, there came a check to all this prosperity. Titles to lands led to inevitable and bitter disputes. Some had purchased from the Indians; some claimed under the original Dutch owners; others had received grants from Nicolls; fewer still held deeds from the Proprietors at that time, Berkeley and Carteret. Bergen and Woodbridge were among the latter, and acknowledged their liability to the payment of these rents; but Elizabeth, Newark, and isolated farmers here and there, who had settled upon

1673.]

CHANGES OF GOVERNORS AND TITLES.

473

their lands before the country had come under the jurisdiction of the English, united in resisting the demands of the proprietary govern

ment.

Resistance, at length, came to be absolute insurrection. A leader only was wanted, and it was not long before one was provided. About a year after the demand for the quit-rents was made, James Carteret, the second son of Sir George, arrived in the colony on his way to Carolina, of which he was one of the landgraves. A dissolute, unscrupulous, and ambitious man, he was ready to take advantage of any fortune that chance threw in his way. He put himself at the head of the movement against his cousin, Philip Carteret, who held his commission from James's father, Sir George. In the spring of 1672 the insurrectionary party called an assembly at Elizabethtown, formally deposed Philip Carteret, and elected James to be Governor in his stead.

Captain

James the head of the

teret at

insurrection.

Philip made little further attempt to contest the matter on the spot, but, appointing a deputy to represent him, took ship in the early summer and sailed for England, to lay the whole matter before his superiors. It was his wisest course. Unaided, he could do nothing against an unwilling people; and possibly he believed that his cousin's government would be to the malcontents a most salutary lesson. Such, at least, was the result. James showed himself to be utterly incompetent. By the time orders were received from the Duke of York, the insurgents were ready to submit. Captain Berry, Philip Carteret's deputy, was acknowledged without further trouble The Proprie in May, 1673; and James Carteret sailed for Virginia ten tary Governdays afterward.2 There was no further interruption of the stored. proprietary government until the Dutch reconquest of New Netherland in the autumn of that year; and even then, though New Jersey received the new name of Achter Col, and ostensibly passed once more under the Netherland rule, the real change was but slight, and internal tranquillity was almost undisturbed.

ment re

Title to New

Jersey after

the Treaty of

New Jersey was placed in a new position when by the treaty of Westminster New Netherland was restored to England. The Duke of York's title to New York had been entirely extinguished by the conquest of the territory by a foreign Westminpower, and its subsequent passage to the crown by treaty; and he required a new grant from the King, in order to be again the rightful proprietor of the province. How much more, then, it

1 Whitehead, pp. 58, 59.

ster.

2 He came back to New York afterward, where he was seen in 1679, "running about among the farmers, and staying where he can get most to drink, and sleeping in barns on the straw." Journal of the Labadists.

was argued and it was an argument the Duke was willing enough to listen to was the title of his grantees, Berkeley and Carteret, in the province of New Jersey destroyed. James saw that he had an opportunity, under cover of this theory, to possess himself again of the territory he had parted with so rashly; and he availed himself of it without delay. He gave to Andros, after he had taken possession of the government of New England, a commission to govern all his property in America, New Jersey included, assuming that the grant to Berkeley and Carteret was void.

Action of
Sir George
Carteret.
His title

In the meantime, however, Sir George Carteret had hastened to do all in his power, not only to protect his own title, but to absorb that of his partner as well. He had gone to the King at once; and Charles, before he sealed his new grant to the Duke, had been induced to assure Carteret by letter that he was "seized of the Province of New Cæsarea, or New

confirmed.

Jersey," and that he had "the sole power, under us, to dispose of the said country, upon such terms and conditions as he should think fit." Berkeley, whose title had been equal with that of Carteret, had, in the spring of this year (1674)1, conveyed his "undivided half" to John Fenwicke in trust for Edward Byllinge, but both his right to grant and his grantees were utterly ignored in this new royal document.

Berkeley's grant to Fenwicke

and Byllinge.

A new grant.

This step on the part of Carteret, interfering alike with the interest of all parties, led to a compromise. A short time after the issue of Andros's commission, a new grant was made (August 8, 1674), to Carteret, in severalty, of that part of New Jersey lying northeast of a line drawn from Barnegat Inlet to Ren1 Proud says (History New Jersey, i., 136), "in or about 1675;" but there is no doubt it was on March 18, 1674.