have been surveyed at
different times in the attempt to make an exactly equal division, which
was no easy engineering task. As private land titles and boundaries were
in some places dependent on the location of the division line, there
resulted much controversy and litigation which lasted down into our
own time. Without going into details, it is sufficient to say that the
acceptable division line began on the seashore at Little Egg Harbor at
the lower end of Barnegat Bay and crossed diagonally or northwesterly to
the northern part of the Delaware River just above the Water Gap. It is
known as the Old Province line, and it can be traced on any map of the
State by prolonging, in both directions, the northeastern boundary of
Burlington County.

West Jersey, which became decidedly Quaker, did not remain long in the
possession of Lord Berkeley. He was growing old; and, disappointed in
his hopes of seeing it settled, he sold it, in 1673, for one thousand
pounds to John Fenwick and Edward Byllinge, both of them old Cromwellian
soldiers turned Quakers. That this purchase was made for the purpose
of affording a refuge in America for Quakers then much imprisoned and
persecuted in England does not very distinctly appear. At least there
was no parade of it. But such a purpose in addition to profit for the
proprietors may well have been in the minds of the purchasers.

George Fox, the Quaker leader, had just returned from a missionary
journey in America, in the course of which he had traveled through New
Jersey in going from New York to Maryland. Some years previously in
England, about 1659, he had made inquiries as to a suitable place for
Quaker settlement and was told of the region north of Maryland which
became Pennsylvania. But how could a persecuted sect obtain such a
region from the British Crown and the Government that was persecuting
them? It would require powerful influence at Court; nothing could then
be done about it; and Pennsylvania had to wait until William Penn became
a man with influence enough in 1681 to win it from the Crown. But here
was West Jersey, no longer owned directly by the Crown and bought in
cheap by two Quakers. It was an unexpected opportunity. Quakers soon
went to it, and it was the first Quaker colonial experiment.

Byllinge and Fenwick, though turned Quakers, seem to have retained
some of the contentious Cromwellian spirit of their youth. They soon
quarreled over their respective interests in the