lers they were in no sense adventurers,
gold seekers, cavaliers, or desperadoes. They were well-to-do middle
class English tradespeople who would never have thought of leaving
England if they had not lost faith in the stability of civil and
religious liberty and the security of their property under the Stuart
Kings. With them came servants, as they were called; that is, persons of
no property, who agreed to work for a certain time in payment of their
passage, to escape from England. All, indeed, were escaping from England
before their estates melted away in fines and confiscations or their
health or lives ended in the damp, foul air of the crowded prisons. Many
of those who came had been in jail and had decided that they would not
risk imprisonment a second time. Indeed, the proportion of West Jersey
immigrants who had actually been in prison for holding or attending
Quaker meetings or refusing to pay tithes for the support of the
established church was large. For example, William Bates, a carpenter,
while in jail for his religion, made arrangements with his friends
to escape to West Jersey as soon as he should be released, and his
descendants are now scattered over the United States. Robert Turner, a
man of means, who settled finally in Philadelphia but also owned much
land near Newton in West Jersey, had been imprisoned in England in 1660,
again in 1662, again in 1665, and some of his property had been taken,
again imprisoned in 1669 and more property taken; and many others had
the same experience. Details such as these make us realize the situation
from which the Quakers sought to escape. So widespread was the Quaker
movement in England and so severe the punishment imposed in order to
suppress it that fifteen thousand families are said to have been ruined
by the fines, confiscations, and imprisonments.

Not a few Jersey Quakers were from Ireland, whither they had fled
because there the laws against them were less rigorously administered.
The Newton settlers were joined by Quakers from Long Island, where,
under the English law as administered by the New York governors, they
had also been fined and imprisoned, though with less severity than at
home, for nonconformity to the Church of England. On arriving, the West
Jersey settlers suffered some hardships during the year that must elapse
before a crop could be raised and a log cabin or house built. During
that period they usually lived, in the Indian manner, in wigwams of