North Carolina.
In North Carolina the scattered colonists maintained a vigorous resistance to arbitrary authority; the tone of official life was low; corruption in office was common; contests over questions of public policy often led to rioting and anarchy; bloodshed was not infrequent in such times of popular disturbance. In the far western valleys there was for a long period no pretence of law or order, and criminals of every sort found a safe refuge there; while pirates—until Blackbeard's capture by Governor Spotswood of Virginia in 1718—freely used the deep-coast inlets as snug harbors, from which they darted out with rakish craft to attack passing merchant-vessels. From 1704 to 1711 there was practically no government in the province, owing to an insurrection headed by Thomas Carey, whom Governor Spotswood finally arrested (1710) and sent prisoner to England.
Virginia.
During the administration of Governor Nicholson (1698-1705) the Virginia assembly had quietly gained control of the financial machinery, by making the treasurer an officer of its own appointment. When, therefore, the customary eighteenth-century wrangling commenced, the assembly was master of the situation. The burgesses refused to vote money for public defence until the governors yielded their claims of prerogative, and land-title fees.
125. Governors of Middle Colonies.
Pennsylvania.
Nowhere was the weary disagreement between governor and assembly so harmful to provincial interests as in Pennsylvania. There were elements in the contention there not existing elsewhere. The Penn family, as the proprietors, resisted the proposed inclusion of their lands in tax levies for the conduct of military operations, while the assembly for many years would vote no money for such purposes or pay the governor's salary, except on the condition that the proprietary estates paid their share in the cost of defence. The proprietors finally yielded (1759). Other points of difference were,—the assertion of the gubernatorial prerogative of establishing courts, and proprietary opposition to the reckless issues of paper money frequently ordered by the assembly. The Quakers were opposed to warfare on principle; they would neither take up arms themselves in defence of the borderers from the French and Indians, nor, except when driven to it in times of great distress, vote money to equip or pay volunteers. They had, too, a great objection to levying and paying taxes; and in this they found strong allies in the Germans, who had now come over in large numbers, chiefly to settle on wild lands in the interior of the province. Most of the Germans and Quakers would go to almost any length in compromise with the Indian and French invaders who were mercilessly destroying the pioneer settlements. The proprietors and their governors fretted and threatened; the English government sent over order after order to the stubborn legislators; the borderers plied the deputies with heart-rending appeals for aid: yet the assembly long maintained its obstinate course, now and then grudgingly voting insufficient issues of depreciated bills of credit.
New York.
Lord Cornbury, who succeeded the Earl of Bellomont as governor of New York and New Jersey (1702), was not a man to inspire respect, being profligate and overbearing; he opposed popular interests, winning especial hatred through his petty persecution of dissenters from the Church of England. He was recalled in 1708, in response to general denunciation of his course. His successors were in continuous and often acrimonious controversy with their assemblies, but generally succeeded in inducing the deputies to contribute with more or less liberality to the conduct of expeditions against the French and Indians.
New Jersey.