Mother, for the love of grace
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass but my madness speaks.
It will skin and film the ulcerous place;
While rank corruption, winning all within,
Infects unseen--
--SHAKESPEARE.
With the return of prosperity Mrs. Stevens deserted and forgot her husband's relatives notwithstanding their kindness to her in adversity. Mrs. Stevens possessed a ruinous pride and vanity combined with a haughty spirit and small gratitude. She was wealthy, again the cavaliers were in power, and she was the gayest of the gay. She was still youthful and beautiful and out of widow's weeds.
"Hugh Price will surely wed her," said Sarah Drummond.
No sooner was Governor Berkeley inaugurated, after receiving his commission from Charles II., than he gave a grand reception at which there was music and dancing. The young widow was there in silk, lace and ruffles, her black eyes sparkling with pleasure. Hugh Price, a great favorite of the governor, was one of the most dashing gentlemen in Virginia at the time. He was a handsome fellow with hair bordering on redness and eyes a dark brown. His mustache was between golden and red, and he possessed an excellent form.
He was seen much in the society of the widow Stevens, and some of his friends began to chaff him on his attentions, which made the cavalier blush.
"Verily, Hugh is a good cavalier, Dorothe is a royalist and was never happy with John Stevens; it is better that she wed him."
Robert Stevens was twelve or fourteen, when his mother, laying aside her widow's weeds, became young again. Robert remembered his father and their days of privation, and he did not forget that all they had, they owed to that father. He witnessed his mother's smiles and blushes with some anxiety. One day, as he was going an errand to Neck of Land, he was accosted by a meddlesome fellow named William Stump, with:
"Master Robert, do you know you are soon to have a father-in-law?" (Stepfather was in those days known as father-in-law.)
"No!" cried the boy, indignantly.
"By the mass! you are. Don't you observe how Hugh Price is continually with your mother?"
Robert's eyes filled with tears, and he cried:
"I will kill him!"
William Stump, laughing at the misery he had occasioned, answered:
"Marry! lad, you can do naught. Better win the favor of Hugh, for he can be a cruel master."
Robert went on his errand, hating both Hugh Price and William Stump, and he determined to appeal to his mother to have no more to do with Hugh Price.
Robert had been sent on the errand by the mother, that he might be away when Hugh Price came. She had an intuition, as women sometimes do, that the supreme moment had arrived in which Hugh would "speak his mind." The widow looked very pretty in her lace and silk and frilled cap, from which the raven tresses peeped. She had also managed to dispose of little Rebecca, so the coast was clear when Mr. Price, on his gayly caparisoned steed, arrived. To one not acquainted with the state of Hugh Price's mind, his appearance and behavior on the occasion of his ride from Greensprings to Jamestown would have been mysterious and unaccountable.
Dismounting at the stiles he gave the rein to a gayly dressed negro, who led the animal into the barn while the negro girl showed him to the parlor, which was furnished gorgeously. The harp which the widow played was in the corner with her Spanish guitar. The room was unoccupied when Hugh entered. He paced to and fro with nervous tread, popped his head out of the window at intervals of three or four minutes and glanced at the hourglass on the mantel, manifesting an impatience unusual in him.
It was quite evident that some subject of great importance occupied his mind. At last Mrs. Stevens entered, quite flustered, almost out of breath and her cheeks crimson with youth and beauty. Wheeling about from the window through which he had been nervously gazing, he accosted her with:
"Mrs. Stevens, I have chosen this opportune moment--"
Here he choked. Something seemed to rise in his throat and cut off his speech. Dorothe glanced at him, her great dark eyes wide open in real or affected wonder and asked:
"Well, Mr. Price, for what have you chosen this moment?"
"It is, madame, to tell you--ahem, this day is very hot."
"So it is," Dorothe answered, her dark eyes beaming tenderly on him. "Won't you sit? Your long ride has fatigued you."
"Indeed it has," answered Hugh, accepting the proffered seat. The fine speech which Hugh had been studying all the way to Jamestown had quite vanished from his mind; but the widow was inclined to help him on with his wooing. After three or four more efforts to clear his throat, he began:
"Mrs. Stevens, I came--ahem--all the way here to ask you--to get your opinion--that is to say--"
Here he stopped again. The words in his throat had become clogged, and Hugh's face was purple, while great drops of sweat stood out in beads on his forehead.
Dorothe, free from the embarrassment which tortured him, waited a respectable length of time for him to clear away that annoying obstruction in his throat, and then to help him along, began:
"Why, Mr. Price, you have always been one of my best friends, and I assure you that any suggestion or information I can give you, will be freely given," and here the widow blushed to the border of her cap, and touched her mouth with the corner of her apron.
Price, fixing his eyes on the ceiling, gathered courage enough to begin again:
"I have come to remark, Mrs. Stevens, that--ahem--that--do you think the restoration of monarchy is permanent?"
"Oh, I hope so," replied the widow very earnestly and softly, with a glance at the cavalier.
"Under the restoration, do you--ahem--think it is a much greater expense to keep two people than to keep one?" He was getting at it at last.
"Oh, dear me, Mr. Price!" said Mrs. Stevens, coloring again, for she fancied she saw in the near future a proposal coming. "Oh, what a question!"
The cavalier, having gotten fairly started, now came boldly to the charge. He had asked a question and demanded an answer. She thought it did not make the expense very much greater if the people were economical and careful, and then the pleasure of being in the society of some one was certainly very great.
That was just what Mr. Price had all along been thinking, and then, with his great manly heart all bursting with human kindness, he said:
"You must be very lonely, Mrs. Stevens."
"Lonely, oh, so lonely!" and the white apron was changed from the corner of the mouth to the corner of the eyes.
"I have thought so often of you living here alone with those children, who need a father's care."
By this time the widow was whimpering. He grew bolder and, falling on his knees, began an impassioned avowal of love. The widow, startled by the earnestness of her lover, rose to her feet in dismay.
At this juncture the door was thrown open, and the boy Robert entered to take a part in the scene. He carried a stout staff and, raising it with both hands, brought it down with a resounding whack on the shoulders of his mother's suitor.
Then a scene followed. Robert was ejected from the room and the mother made it all right with the injured party. A few days later it was currently reported that the widow Stevens was to wed Hugh Price the handsome cavalier. Mr. Stevens, the brother of her former husband, was shocked at the announcement and, in conversation with his wife, said:
"She who has always been an enemy to second marriages is now to bring a father-in-law over her children to the house."
"Poor children when Hugh Price becomes their master, as he will."
"I believe it is my duty to expostulate with her."
"Nay, nay, husband, it will be of no avail. You will have your trouble for your pains."
On a second thought, he was convinced that it would be folly to interpose.
"It will be better to let her have her way," he concluded. "Marry! she hath never sought advice or shelter save when her trouble overwhelmed her. In prosperity we are strangers, in adversity friends. Alas, poor children!"
The cavalier Price was seen frequently on the streets of Jamestown, and his friends noticed that he spent much of his time with the widow. He was smiling. His fat face and dark brown eyes seemed to glow with happiness. He never looked ugly, save when he encountered Robert's scowling face, and then he felt unpleasant sensations about the shoulders.
[Illustration: The door was thrown open and the boy Robert entered to take a part in the scene.]
Grinding his teeth in rage, he said:
"I will have my revenge on him when he is under my control."
Hugh Price was not in a great hurry. He bided his time, and not even a frown ruffled his brow. He greeted the children with sunny smiles calculated to win their hearts, and under ordinary circumstances they might have done so. But from the first he was regarded with aversion, as an intruder upon their sanctuary and love. The dislike was mutual, for, though Price concealed his feelings, there rankled in his breast an enmity which he could not smother.
Robert was open in his resentment. It was the first time he had ever opposed his mother. Even when younger, in their trouble and sore distress, he was her counsellor. He had not complained when the heaviest burdens were laid on his young shoulders. He had done the work of a man long before he was even a stout lad. Privation and hardship were borne without complaint. He rejoiced on his mother's account when their fortunes so suddenly and unexpectedly changed. Toil was over. Rest came and with it the improvement he desired.
It was hoped by her best friends that the bitter lesson which Dorothe had learned would prove effective, but it did not. Women of her disposition never learn by experience, and she plunged once more into extravagance and folly. The boy was old enough to realize his mother's weakness, yet his great love for her placed her above censure. He was silent and would have borne a second misfortune like the first uncomplaining; but when he learned that she was to bring one to take the place of that father who slept beneath the sea, he rebelled.
Dorothe knew the disposition of her children, and she decided to get them out of the way until after the wedding. At last she hit upon a plan. Once more in her need she had recourse to the relatives of her husband. Her husband's sister had married Richard Griffin, a planter, and lived at Flower de Hundred. The children had always loved their paternal relatives, and, though they had not been permitted to visit them since the restoration, they had by no means forgotten them. They hailed with joy the announcement that they were to go to Flower de Hundred.
One morning in early June three horses were saddled, and Robert and Rebecca, accompanied by a trusty negro named Sam, started on their journey. Most of the travel, especially to a country as far away as Flower de Hundred, was on horseback.
"I am so glad we are going," said Rebecca, as they galloped along the road through the woods. "Mother was good to let us go."
"I am s'prised at the missus," the negro said, shaking his head. "Sumfin am gwine to happen now fur sure, sumfin am gwine to happen."
"Why?" asked Robert.
"Misse neber gwine to dem people less dar be sumfin for a-gwine ter happen."
Little Rebecca cast furtive glances about in the dark old wood through which they were riding and with a shudder asked:
"Is there any danger of Indians?"
So often had the savages drenched the earth with blood, that the child had a dread of them.
"Dun know, Misse Rebecca. Sam gwine ter fight if Indians come."
"But they must not come."
"No Injun hurt Misse. Sam not let um."
Robert, young as he was, had little faith in the negro's boasts as a protector, for he knew that Sam was a coward and would fly at the first intimation of danger. The journey was made without incident. It was a journey through a country romantic and picturesque to the youthful Robert. The grand old forest, with its untrodden paths, the tall trees, the dead monarchs of the forest, with branches white and bare spread like ghost's fingers in the air, filled his imagination with picturesque visions. Next they journeyed through a strip of low lands covered with tall, coarse grass, which came almost to the backs of the horses. Then they swam streams in which the negro held the girl on her horse. At night Flower de Hundred was reached, and the children were with their aunt.
Sam left them to return to Jamestown with the horses. As he went away, he took Robert aside and, with a strange look on his ebony face, said:
"Spect sumfin bad am gwine ter happen, Masse Robert. She neber sent ye heah but for bad luck ter come. Look out for it now, lem me told ye; look out foh it now."
Robert knew that all negroes were superstitious, and Sam's strange warning made very little impression on him. He and his sister were happy with their relatives who were kind to them.
Occasionally the uncle and the aunt were found talking in subdued tones with eyes fixed on Robert and Rebecca; but he did not think it could have any relation to them.
The days were spent in frolicsome glee among the old Virginia woods, and the nights in healthful repose. Robert felt at times a vague, strange uneasiness. It seemed so odd that his mother should send them away, and that so many days should elapse without hearing from her. It was not at all like her; but he was so free and so happy in his new existence, that he did not allow it to trouble him.
One day a wandering hunter from Jamestown came by the house where Robert was playing with his cousins and called to him:
"Ho! master Robert, I have news for you," he called to the lad.
"William Stump, when did you come?" he asked.
"But this day," was the answer.
"Where are you from?"
"Jamestown, and, by the mass! my young gay cavalier, I have news for you. Marry! have you not heard it already?"
"I have heard nothing."
"Your mother hath married," cried Stump with fiendish chuckle.
"It is false!" cried Robert.
"By the mass! it is true, my young cavalier," and Stump laughed at the expression of misery which came over the young face. "It was a gay notion to send you brats away until the ceremony was over. You might make trouble, you know. Ha, ha, ha! You laid your stick about the shoulders of Mr. Hugh Price, now he will return blow for blow," and, with another chuckle, Stump sauntered away, his gun on his shoulder.
On going to the house Robert had the report confirmed. Some one from Jamestown had brought news of the wedding, and his little sister, with her great dark eyes filled with tears, took him aside and said:
"Brother, mother is married; what does it mean?"
She clung to him, placed her curly head on his bosom and wept. Robert restrained his own tears and sought to soothe his sister.
"Will that man Hugh Price come to live at our house?" she asked.
"Yes."
"But I can never love him. I don't know what it is to love any but you and mother. I don't remember my own father; but you do, Robert?"
"Yes."
"Was he like Mr. Price?"
"No. He was a grand, noble man, with a kind heart."
"Will he let us live at home, now that he has come?" she asked.
Robert, though his own heart was heavy, and he felt gloomy and sad, strove to look on the bright side.
"Yes, he cannot drive us from home," he said.
"But mother will love us no longer."
"She will, sister. No man can rob us of mother's love."
Then they went apart to discuss their sorrow alone, and, as the shades of evening gathered over the scene, their relatives began a search for them. The children were found in the chimney corner clasped in each other's arms sobbing.
Although kind friends and loving relatives did all in their power to console them, they refused to be comforted. Robert remembered that noble father who had so often held him on his knee, that poor father whose mysterious fate was unknown, and he thought how wicked it was for his mother to marry the fox-hunting, gin-tippling cavalier, Hugh Price. He sobbed himself to sleep and dreamed that his father was watching him from out the great, green ocean where he had lain all these years. Price was seeking to repay him the blows he had laid on his shoulders, when the face of the dead man was seen struggling in the green waters, but so choked and entangled among seaweeds that he was forced to give up the effort. A great monster of the deep swallowed his father, and, uttering a shriek, he awoke. The child was trembling from head to foot, while a cold sweat broke out all over his body.
Next morning the negro slave who had brought the children to Flower de Hundred came for them. Taking Robert aside, he said:
"I dun tole yer, Mass Robert, dat a calamity war comin'. It am come--De Missus am married to dat fellah wat ye walloped wid de stick. Hi! but I wish ye kill um."
The long journey to Jamestown was made. They left at sunrise one morning and rode until noon, when they halted in the wilderness to allow the horses an hour to rest and graze, while they lay on a blanket spread on the grass under a tree. Robert and his sister fell asleep, and the negro was nodding, when a snake came gliding through the grass toward the sleeping children. Sam awoke in a moment and, seizing a stout stick, struck the snake and killed it before it could reach the children. They were awakened by the blow and, trembling at their narrow escape, once more set out for Jamestown.
Though they put their horses to their best all the afternoon, the sun was sinking behind the western hills and forests as they came in sight of the settlement. Twilight's sombre mantle was falling over the earth when they arrived at the door of their home and were assisted by the servants to alight.
Robert and his sister were so sore and tired they scarcely could stand. A candelabra had been lighted in the house, and the soft rays came through the open casement; but the house was strangely silent. No mother came to welcome them home with a kiss, and a chill of death fell upon those young hearts. Robert dared not ask where she was and why she was not at the stiles; but Rebecca was younger, more inexperienced and impulsive.
"Where is mother, Dinah?" she asked her mother's housekeeper.
"In de house, chile, waitin' for you," she answered.
Poor, tired, heart-broken little Rebecca forgot all save that she was her mother, and she ran upon the piazza and burst into the room where Mr. Hugh Price and her mother were.
"Come here, my darling," said Mrs. Price, kissing her daughter. "This man is your father now, and he will be very good to you."
It was like a dash of cold water on the warm little heart, and, starting back, she glanced at him from the corners of her pretty black eyes and answered:
"I cannot call him father."
"You will learn to, my dear," Price answered with a smile.
"Come, Robert, come and greet your new father," said the mother.
Robert remained stubbornly at the door and, with a dangerous fire flashing in his eyes, answered:
"Call him not my father; he is no father of mine!"
"You will learn to like me, children," answered Mr. Price, with an effort to be pleasant; but it needed no prophet to see that there was trouble in the near future.
THE MOVING WORLD.
If we could look down the long vista of ages,
And witness the changes of time,
Or draw from Isaiah's mysterious pages
A key to this vision sublime;
We'd gaze on the picture with pride and delight,
And all its magnificence trace,
Give honor to man for his genius and might,
And glory to God for his grace.
--PAXTON.
After the surrender of New York to the English, in the year 1665 Peter Stuyvesant went to Holland to report to his superiors. In order to shift the responsibility from their own shoulders, they declared that the governor had not done his duty, and they asked the States-General to disapprove of the scandalous surrender of New Netherland. Stuyvesant made a similar counter-charge and begged the States-General to speedily decide his case, that he might return to America for his family. The authorities required him to answer the charges of the West India Company. He sent to New York for sworn testimony, and at the end of six months he made an able report, its allegations sustained by unimpeachable witnesses. The company made a petulant rejoinder, when circumstances put an end to the dispute. War between Holland and England then raging was ended by the peace concluded at Breda in 1667, when the former relinquished to the latter its claims to New Netherland. This brought to an end the controversy between Stuyvesant and the West India Company.
Stuyvesant went to England and obtained from King Charles permission for three Dutch vessels to have free commerce with New York for the space of seven years. Then he sailed for America, with the determination of spending the remainder of his life in New York. He was cordially welcomed by his old friends and kindly received by his political enemies, who had learned by experience that he was not a worse governor than the Duke had sent them. Stuyvesant retired to hisbowerieor farm on East River, from which the famous Bowery of New York City derived its name, and in tranquillity passed the remainder of his life.
The people of New York soon discovered that a change of masters did not increase their prosperity or happiness. Brodhead says: "Fresh names and laws they found did not secure fresh liberties. Amsterdam was changed to New York and Orange to Albany; but these changes only commemorated the titles of a conqueror. It was nearly twenty years before the conqueror allowed for a brief period to the people of New York even that partial degree of representative government which they had enjoyed when the tri-colored ensign of Holland was hauled down from the flagstaff of Fort Amsterdam. New Netherland exchanged Stuyvesant and the West India Company and a republican sovereignty for Nicolls, a royal proprietor and a hereditary king. The province was not represented in Parliament, nor could the voice of its people reach the chapel of St. Stephen at Westminster as readily as it had reached the chambers of the Binnenhof at the Hague."
Nicolls was succeeded by Francis Lovelace in 1667. Lovelace was a quiet man, unfitted to encounter great storms, yet he showed considerable energy in dealing with hostile Indians and French on the northern frontier of New York. He held friendly intercourse with the people of New England, and in the summer of 1672, when a hostile squadron of Dutch vessels of war appeared before his capital, he was on a friendly visit to Governor Winthrop of Connecticut. War had again broken out between England and Holland, and the Dutch inhabitants of New York had shown signs of discontent at the abridgment of their political privileges and a heavy increase in their taxes without their consent. Personally, they liked Lovelace; but they were bound to consider him as the representative of a petty tyrant. When, in menacing attitude, they demanded more liberty and less taxation, the governor in a passion unwisely declared that they should "have liberty for no thought but how to pay their taxes." This was resented, and when the Dutch squadron came, nearly all the Hollanders regarded their countrymen in the ships as liberators. When Colonel Manning, who commanded the fort, called for volunteers, few came, and these not as friends but as enemies, for they spiked the cannon in front of the statehouse.
The fleet came up broadside to the fort, and Manning, sending a messenger for Lovelace, opened fire on the enemy. One cannon ball passed through the Dutch flagship from side to side; but the balls from the fleet began pounding against the walls of the fort. Six hundred Holland soldiers landed on the banks of the Hudson above the town and were quickly joined by four hundred Dutch citizens in arms urging them to storm the fort.
With shouts and yells of triumph the body of one thousand men were marching down Broadway for that purpose. They were met by a messenger from Manning proposing to surrender the fort, if the troops might be allowed to march out with the honors of war. The proposition was accepted. Manning's troops marched out with colors flying and drums beating and laid down their arms. The Dutch soldiers marched in followed by the English troops, who were made prisoners of war and confined in the church. It was the 9th of August, 1672, and the air was quivering with heat, when the flag of the Dutch Republic once more waved over Fort Amsterdam, and the name of the city of New York was changed to New Orange, in compliment to William Prince of Orange.
The Dutch had taken New York.
The New Netherland and all the settlements on the Delaware speedily followed the capture of New York. The other English colonies near the province were amazed and prepared to defend their own domains against the encroachments of the Dutch, and Connecticut foolishly talked of an offensive war. Anthony Clove, the governor of reconquered New Amsterdam, was wide-awake. He kept his eye on the movements of the savages and Frenchmen on the north, watched every hostile indication in the east, and sent proclamations and commissions to towns on Long Island and in Westchester to compel hesitating boroughs to take the oath of allegiance to Prince William of Orange. His forts about New Orange were strengthened and mounted with one hundred and ninety cannon. A treaty of peace between the Dutch and English, however, made at London in 1674, restored New Netherland to the British crown. Some doubts arising as to the title of the Duke of York after the change, the king gave him a new grant of territory in June, 1674, within the boundary of which was included all the domain west of the Connecticut River, to the eastern shores of the Delaware, also Long Island and a territory in Maine. King Charles had commissioned Major Edmond Andros to receive the surrender of this province of New Netherland (New York) to which he was appointed governor. The final surrender was made in October, 1674, by the Dutch governor, who delivered up the keys of the fort to Major Andros, and the English never lost possession of the colony and city, until the united colonies gained their independence.
The political changes in New York had its effect on the settlements to the west and south. Eastward of the Delaware Bay and River (so called in honor of Lord De la Warr) lies New Jersey. Its domain was included in the New Netherland charter. So early as 1622, transient trading settlements were made on its soil, at Bergen and on the banks of the Delaware. The following year, Director May, moved by the attempt of a French sea-captain to set up the arms of France in Delaware, built the fort called Fort Nassau at the mouth of Timmer Kill or Timber Creek, a few miles below Camden, and settled some young Walloons near it. The Walloons (young couples), who had been married on shipboard, settled on the site of Gloucester. This was the first settlement of white people in New Jersey that lived long; but it, too, withered away in time. It was seven years later when Michael Pauw made his purchase from the Indians of the territory extending from Hoboken to the Raritan River and, latinizing his name, called it Pavonia.
In this purchase was included the settlement of some Dutch at Bergen. Though other settlements were attempted, it was forty years before any of them became permanent. Cape May, a territory sixteen miles square, which Captain Heyes bought of the Indians, all the time remained an uncultivated wilderness, yielding the products of its salt meadows to the browsing deer.
After the trouble with Dutch and Swedes the English came under the agent of the Duke of York and captured the New Netherland. While Nicolls was on his way to capture the Dutch possessions in America, the Duke of York conveyed to two favorites all the territory between the Hudson and Delaware rivers from Cape May north to the latitude of forty degrees and forty minutes. Those favorites were Lord Berkeley, brother of the governor of Virginia and the duke's own governor in his youth, and Sir George Carteret, then the treasurer of the admiralty, who had been governor of the island of Jersey, which he had gallantly defended against the forces of Cromwell. In the charter this province was named "Nova Caesarea or New Jersey," in commemoration of Carteret's loyalty and gallant deeds while governor of the island of Jersey. Colonel Richard Nicolls, the conqueror of New Netherland, in changing the name of the province to New York, ignorant of the charter given to Berkeley and Carteret, called the territory west of the Hudson Albania, in honor of his employer, who had the title of Duke of York and Albany.
Berkeley and Carteret hastened to make use of their patent. The title of their constitution was: "The concessions and agreement of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of Nova Caesarea or New Jersey, to and with all and every new adventurers and all such as shall settle and plant there." It was a fair and liberal constitution, providing for governor and council appointed by the proprietors, and deputies or representatives chosen by the people, who should meet annually and, with the governor and his council, form a general assembly for the government of the colony. It provided for a choice of a president by the representatives when in session, in case of the absence of the governor and deputy governor. All legislative power was vested in the assembly of deputies, who were to make all laws for the province. These were to be consistent with the laws and customs of Great Britain and not repugnant to the interests of the proprietors. Emigration to New Jersey was encouraged. To every free man who would go to the province with the first governor, furnished with a good musket and plenty of ammunition and with provisions for six months, was offered a free gift of one hundred and fifty acres of land, and for every able man-servant that such emigrant should take with him so armed and provisioned, a like quantity of land. Even the sending of such servants provided with arms, ammunitions and food was likewise rewarded. And for every weaker servant or female servant over fourteen years, seventy-five acres of land was given. "Christian servants" were entitled, at the expiration of the term of service, to the land so granted for their own use and benefit. To all who should settle in the province before the beginning of 1665, other than those who should go with the governor, was offered one hundred and twenty acres of land on like conditions.
It was expected that these tempting offers would rapidly people the country with industrious settlers. Philip Carteret, a cousin of Sir George, was appointed governor, and with about thirty emigrants, several of whom were Frenchmen skilled in the art of salt-making, he sailed for New York, where he arrived about the middle of July, 1665. The vessel having been driven into the Chesapeake Bay the month before, anchored at the mouth of the James River, from whence the governor sent dispatches to New York. Among them was a copy of the duke's grant of New Jersey. Governor Nicolls was astounded at the folly of the duke's grant, and mortified by this dismemberment of a state over which he had been ruling for many months with pride and satisfaction. But he bottled his wrath until the arrival of Carteret, whom he received at Fort James with all the honors due to his rank and station. That meeting in the governor's apartments was a notable one. Mr. Lossing graphically described it as follows:
Illustration: His temper flamed out in words
"Nicolls was tall, athletic and about forty-five years of age, a soldier, haughty and sometimes very irritable and brusque in speech when excited. Carteret was shorter and fat, good-natured and affable, with polished manners which he had learned by being much at court. He entered the governor's room with Bollen, the commissary of the fort, when the former arose, beckoned his secretary to withdraw, and received his distinguished visitor cordially. But when Carteret presented the outspread parchment, bearing the original of the duke's grant with his grace's seal and signature, Nicolls could not restrain his feelings. His temper flamed out in words of fierce anger. He stormed, and uttered denunciations in language as respectful as possible. He paced the floor backward and forward rapidly, his hands clasped behind his back, and finally calmed down and begged his visitor's pardon for his uncontrollable outburst of passion.
"Nicolls yielded gracefully yet sorrowfully to circumstances, and contented himself with addressing a manly remonstrance to the duke, in which he urged an arrangement for the grantees to give up their domain in exchange for 'a few hundred thousand acres all along the seacoast.'"
The remonstrance came too late. New Jersey was already down on the maps as a separate province. Governor Carteret at the head of a few followers crossed over to his domain with a hoe on his shoulder in significance of his desire to become a planter. For his seat of government he chose a beautifully shaded spot, not far from the strait between Staten Island and the main, called the Kills, where he found four English families living in as many neatly built log cabins with gardens around them. The heads of these four families were John Bailey, Daniel Denton, and Luke Watson and one other not known, from Jamaica, Long Island, who had bought the land of some Indians on Long Island.
In compliment to the wife of Sir George Carteret, the governor named the place Elizabethtown, which name it yet retains. There he built a house for himself near the bank of the little creek, and there he organized a civil government. So was laid the foundation of the colony and commonwealth of New Jersey.
The restoration did not so materially change the New England colonies as might have been supposed, considering that they were hotbeds of Puritanism. In the younger Winthrop the qualities of human excellence were mingled in such happy proportions that, while he always wore an air of contentment, no enterprise in which he engaged seemed too lofty for his powers. He was a man whose power was felt alike in the commonwealth and the restoration. The new king had not been two years on the throne when, through his influence, an ample patent was obtained for Connecticut, by which the colony was independent except in name.
After his successful negotiations and efficient concert in founding the Royal Society, Winthrop returned to America. The amalgamation of New Haven and Connecticut could not be effected without collision. New Haven had been unwilling to merge itself in the larger colonies; but Winthrop's wise moderation was able to reconcile the jarrings and blend the interests of the united colonies. The universal approbation of Connecticut was reasonable, for the charter which Winthrop obtained secured to her an existence of unsurpassed tranquillity.
Civil freedom was safe under the shelter of masculine morality, and beggary and crime could not thrive in the midst of severest manners. From the first, the minds of the yeomanry were kept active by the constant exercise of the elective franchise, and, except under James II., there was no such thing in the land as a home officer appointed by the English king. Under the happy conditions of affairs, education was cherished, religious knowledge was carried to the highest degree of refinement, alike in its application to moral duties and to the mysterious questions on the nature of God, of liberty and of the soul. A hardy race multiplied along thealluvionof the streams and subdued the more rocky and less inviting fields. Its population for a century doubled once in twenty years, though there was considerable emigration from the valley. Religion united with the pursuits of agriculture gave to the people the aspects of steady habits. The domestic wars were discussions of knotty points in theology. The concerns of the parish and the merits of the minister were the weightiest affairs, and a church reproof the heaviest calamity. The strifes of the parent country, though they sometimes occasioned a levy among the sons of the husbandmen, never brought an enemy over their border. No fears of midnight ruffians disturbed the sweetest slumber, and the best house required no fastening but a latch, lifted by a string.
Happiness was enjoyed unconsciously. Beneath a rugged exterior, humanity wore its sweetest smile. For a long time there was hardly a lawyer in the land. The husbandman who held his own plough and fed his own cattle was the greatest man of the age. No one was superior to the matron, who, with her busy daughters, kept the hum of the wheel incessantly alive, spinning and weaving every article of their dress. Fashion was confined within narrow limits, and pride, which aimed at no grander equipage than a pillion, could exult only in the common splendor of the blue and white linen gown, with short sleeves, coming down to the waist, and in the snow-white flaxen apron, which, primly starched and ironed, was worn on public days. There was no revolution except from the time of sowing to the time of reaping, from the plain dress of the week to the more trim attire of Sunday. Every family was taught to look to the fountain of all good.
Life was not all sombre. Frolic mingled with innocence. Sometimes religion itself wore the garb of gayety, and the annual thanksgiving to God was, from primitive times, as joyous as it was sincere. Nature always asserts her rights, and Christianity means gladness.
The English colonies of the south after the restoration began to show evidence of improvement. Mr. William Drummond, the sturdy Scotch emigrant to Virginia, having been appointed governor of North Carolinia brought that country into the favorable notice of the world. Clarendon gained for Carolinia a charter which opened the way for religious freedom. One clause held out to the proprietaries a hope of revenue from colonial customs, to be imposed in colonial ports by Carolinia legislatures. Another gave them authority to erect cities and manors, counties and baronies, and to establish orders of nobility with other than English titles. The power to levy troops, to erect fortifications, to make war by sea and land on their enemies, and, in cases of necessity, to exercise martial law was granted them. Every favor was extended to the proprietaries, nothing being neglected but the interests of the English sovereign and rights of the colonists. Imagination encouraged every extravagant hope, and Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, the most active and the most able of the corporators, was deputed by them to frame for the dawning states a perfect constitution, worthy to endure throughout all ages.
The constitutions for Carolinia merit attention as the only continued attempt within the United States to connect political power with hereditary wealth. America was singularly rich in every form of representative government. Its political life was so varied that, in modern constitutions, hardly a method of constituting an upper or popular house has thus far been suggested, of which the character and operation had not already been tested in the experience of our fathers. In Carolinia the disputes of a thousand years were crowded into a generation.
"Europe suffered from absolute but inoperative laws. No statute of Carolinia was to bind beyond a century. Europe suffered from the multiplication of law-books and the perplexities of the law. In Carolinia not a commentary might be written on the constitutions, the statutes, or the common law. Europe suffered from the furies of bigotry. Carolinia promised not equal rights, but toleration to 'Jews, heathens and other dissenters,' to 'men of any religion.' In other respects, 'the interests of the proprietors,' the desires of 'a government most agreeable to monarchy,' and the dread of 'a numerous democracy,' are avowed as the motives for forming the fundamental constitutions of Carolinia.
"The proprietaries, as sovereigns, constituted a close corporation of eight, a number which was never to be diminished or increased. The dignity was hereditary, but in default of heirs, the survivors elected a successor. Thus was formed an upper house, self-elected and immortal." [Footnote: Bancroft, vol. i., page 495.]
Carolinia was an aristocracy, the instincts of which dreads the moral power of proprietary cultivators of the soil, so enacted their perpetual degradation. The leet-men, or tenants holding ten acres of land at a fixed rent, were not only destitute of political franchises, but were adscripts to the soil: "Under the jurisdiction of their lord, without appeal," and it was added: "all children of leet-men shall be leet-men, and so to all generations."
In 1665, Albemarle had been increased by fresh emigrants from New England and by a colony of ship-builders from the Bermudas, who lived contentedly with Stevens as chief magistrate, under a very wise and simple form of government. A council of twelve, six named by the proprietaries, and six chosen by the assembly. An assembly, composed of the governor, the council, and twelve delegates from the freeholders of the incipient settlements, these formed a government which enjoyed popular confidence. No interference from abroad was anticipated, for freedom of religion, and security against taxation, except by the colonial legislature, were conceded. As their lands were confirmed to them on their own terms, the colonists were satisfied.
The authentic record of the legislative history of North Carolinia begins with the autumn of 1666, when the legislators of Albemarle, ignorant of the scheme which Locke and Shaftesbury were maturing, formed a few laws, which, however open to objection, were united to the character and manner of the inhabitants. While freedom struggled in the hearts of the common people to assert its rights and declare that all men were equal and ought to be free, scheming nobles sought to enchain them in one form or another of slavery.