Deputy-Governor Rudyard, accompanied by Samuel Groom as receiver and surveyor-general, arrived in the Province in November 1682, and both were favorably impressed by the condition and advantages of the country. On December 10 following the council was appointed, consisting of Colonel Lewis Morris, Captain John Berry, Captain William Sandford, Lawrence Andress, and Benjamin Price, before whom, on December 20, the deputy-governor took his oath of office, having previously on the 1st been sworn as chief register of the Proprietors. The instructions with which Rudyard was furnished by the Proprietors or Governor Barclay are not on record, but they are presumed to have been in accordance with the terms of a letter to the planters and inhabitants, with which he was furnished, inculcating harmony and earnest endeavors to advance their joint interests. The previous Concessions being confirmed, Rudyard convened an Assembly at Elizabethtown, March 1, 1683; and during the year two additional sessions were held and several acts of importance passed. Among them was one establishing the bounds of four counties into which the Province was divided. “Bergen” included the settlements between the Hudson and Hackensack rivers, and extended to the northern bounds of the Province; “Essex” included all the country north of the dividing line between Woodbridge and Elizabethtown, and west of the Hackensack; “Middlesex” took in all the lands from the Woodbridge line on the north to Chesapeake Harbor on the southeast, and back southwest and northwest to the Province bounds; and “Monmouth” comprised the residue.
Although the administration of Rudyard appears to have been productive of beneficial results, securing a great degree of harmony among the varied interests prevailing in the Province, yet, differing from him in opinion as to the policy of certain measures, the Proprietors, while their confidence in him seems to have been unimpaired, thought proper to put another in his place. The principal reason, therefore, appears to have been that Rudyard and the surveyor-general Groom differed as to the mode of laying out lands. The Concessions contemplated the division of all large tracts into seven parts, one of which was to be for the Proprietors and their heirs. Groom refused to obey the warrants of survey for such tracts unless such an interest of the Proprietors therein was recognized, but the governor and his council took the position that the patents, not the surveys, determined the rights of the parties; and, to have their views carried out, Groom was dismissed and Philip Wells appointed to be his successor. The Proprietors in England, regarding this measure as probably in some way lessening their profits in the Province, sustained the surveyor-general’s views and annulled all grants not made in accordance therewith, and appointed as Rudyard’s successor Gawen Lawrie, a merchant of London,—the same influential Quaker whom we have seen deeply interested already in West Jersey as one of Byllynge’s trustees, and whose intelligence and active business qualifications made his administration of affairs conspicuous.
His commission was dated at London in July 1683, but he did not take his oath of office until February 28 following. Rudyard retained the offices of secretary and register and performed their duties until the close of 1685, when he left for Barbadoes, being succeeded as secretary by James Emott. Lawrie retained Messrs. Morris, Berry, Sandford, and Price of Rudyard’s council, and appointed four others, Richard Hartshorne of Monmouth, Isaac Kingsland of New Barbadoes, Thomas Codrington of Middlesex, Henry Lyon of Elizabeth, and Samuel Dennis of Woodbridge.
The new deputy-governor brought out with him a code of general laws—or fundamental constitutions as they were called, consisting of twenty-four chapters, or articles, adopted by the Proprietors in England—which was considered by its framers, for reasons not apparent, as so superior to the Concessions, that only those who would submit to a resurvey and approval of their several grants, arrange for the payment of quit-rents, and agree to pass an act for the permanent support of the government should enjoy its protection and privileges. All others were to be ruled in accordance with the Concessions. This virtually established two codes of laws for the Province. Lawrie, however, seems to have been convinced of the impropriety of putting the new code in force, although in his instructions he was directed as soon as possible to “order it to be passed in an assembly and settle the country according thereto.” Through his discretion, therefore, the civil policy of the Province remained unchanged.
The country made a most favorable impression upon Lawrie. “There is not a poor body in all the Province, nor that wants,” wrote he to the Proprietors in England; and he urged them to hasten emigration as rapidly as possible,—discovering in the sparseness of the population one great cause of the difficulties his predecessors had encountered, an increase in the number of inhabitants favorable to the Proprietors’ interests being essential.
The Proprietors, however, had not been so unmindful of their interests as not to exert themselves to induce emigration to their newly acquired territory. The first twelve associates directly after receiving the deed for the Province published a Brief Account of the Province of East Jersey, presenting it in a very favorable light, and in 1683 the Scotch Proprietors issued a publication of a similar character. These publications, aided by the personal influence of Governor Barclay over their countrymen, who at that time were greatly dissatisfied with their political condition, and suffering under religious persecution, excited considerable interest for the Province, and a number of emigrants were soon on their way across the Atlantic. Many of them were sent out in the employ of different Proprietors, or under such agreements as would afford their principals the benefits of headland grants, fifty acres being allowed to each master of a family and twenty-five for each person composing it, whether wife, child, or servant,—each servant to be bound three years, at the expiration of which time he or she was to be allowed to take up thirty acres on separate account.
Only a limited success, however, attended these exertions; national and religious ties were not so easily severed. Notwithstanding the ills that pressed so heavily upon them and their countrymen, the voluntary and perpetual exile which they were asked to take upon them required more earnest and pertinent appeals; and therefore, in 1685, a work appeared entitled The Model of the Government of the Province of East New Jersey in America, written by George Scot of Pitlochie at the request of the Proprietors, in which the objections to emigration were refuted, and the condition of the new country stated at length. Further reference to this publication will be made hereafter; it is sufficient to state at present that it led to the embarkation of nearly two hundred persons for East Jersey on board a vessel named the “Henry and Francis,”—a name which deserves as permanent a position in the annals of New Jersey as does that of the “Mayflower” in those of Massachusetts.
The instructions of the Proprietors to Deputy-Governor Lawrie—while firm in their requirements for the execution of all engagements which justice to themselves and other settlers called upon them to enforce—were calculated to restore tranquillity, and to quiet, for a time at least, the opposition to their government. The claims under the Indian purchases having been brought to their notice, and relief sought from the evils to which the claimants had been subjected, elicited a dignified letter in reply, upholding the proprietary authority, and presenting in a forcible manner the difficulties which would inevitably arise should that authority be subverted. In order to prevent further difficulties from the acquisition of Indian titles by individuals the right to purchase was continued in the deputy-governor, and he was directed to make a requisition upon the Proprietors for the necessary funds, as had been done in 1682, by shipping a cargo of goods valued at about one hundred and fifty pounds, and expending the amount for that purpose.
The necessity for the cultivation of good feelings with the Province of New York was manifest. Having for its chief executive one whose arbitrary temper and disposition led him to disregard solemn engagements, the relations between the provinces were not likely to be made more harmonious because he was heir-apparent to the throne of England; and it was consequently in accordance both with the principles of the Friends and the promptings of sound judgment and discretion, that the Proprietors urged upon Lawrie the propriety of fostering a friendly correspondence with New York, and avoiding everything that might occasion misapprehension or cause aggressions upon their rights.
Lawrie conformed himself to the tenor of his instructions. He visited Governor Dongan and remained with him two or three days, discussing their mutual rights and privileges, and was treated by him with kindness and respect; and being of a less grasping disposition than his predecessor, there were no open acts of hostility to the proprietary government manifested by him.