oon there were flourishing
little villages, Newark and Elizabeth, besides Middletown and
Shrewsbury. The next year Piscatawa and Woodbridge were added. Newark
and the region round it, including the Oranges, was settled by very
exclusive Puritans, or Congregationalists, as they are now called,
some thirty families from four Connecticut towns--Milford, Guilford,
Bradford, and New Haven. They decided that only church members should
hold office and vote.

Governor Carteret ruled the colony with an appointive council and a
general assembly elected by the people, the typical colonial form of
government. His administration lasted from 1665 to his death in 1682;
and there is nothing very remarkable to record except the rebellion of
the New Englanders, especially those who had received their land from
Nicolls. Such independent Connecticut people were, of course, quite out
of place in a proprietary colony, and, when in 1670 the first collection
of quitrents was attempted, they broke out in violent opposition, in
which the settlers of Elizabeth were prominent. In 1672 they elected
a revolutionary assembly of their own and, in place of the deputy
governor, appointed as proprietor a natural son of Carteret. They
began imprisoning former officers and confiscating estates in the most
approved revolutionary form and for a time had the whole government in
their control. It required the interference of the Duke of York, of the
proprietors, and of the British Crown to allay the little tempest, and
three years were given in which to pay the quitrents.

After the death of Sir George Carteret in 1680, his province of East
Jersey was sold to William Penn and eleven other Quakers for the sum
of 3400 pounds. Colonies seem to have been comparatively inexpensive
luxuries in those days. A few years before, in 1675, Penn and some other
Quakers had, as has already been related, gained control of West Jersey
for the still smaller sum of one thousand pounds and had established
it as a Quaker refuge. It might be supposed that they now had the same
purpose in view in East Jersey, but apparently their intention was to
create a refuge for Presbyterians, the famous Scotch Covenanters,
much persecuted at that time under Charles II, who was forcing them to
conform to the Church of England.

Penn and his fellow proprietors of East Jersey each chose a partner,
most of them Scotchmen, two of whom, the Earl of Perth and Lord
Drummond, were prominent men. To t