Berkeley and Carteret divided the province between them.In 1676an exact division was attempted, creating the rather unnatural sections known as East Jersey and West Jersey.The first idea seems to have been to divide by a line running from Barnegat on the seashore to the mouth of Pensauken Creek on the Delaware just above Camden.This, however, would have made a North Jersey and a South Jersey, with the latter much smaller than the former.
Several lines seem to 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 ownership of West Jersey; and to prevent a lawsuit, so objectionable to Quakers, the decision was left to William Penn, then a rising young Quaker about thirty years old, dreaming of ideal colonies in America.Penn awarded Fenwick a one-tenth interest and four hundred pounds.Byllinge soon became insolvent and turned over his nine-tenths interest to his creditors, appointing Penn and two other Quakers, Gawen Lawrie, a merchant of London, and Nicholas Lucas, a maltster of Hertford, to hold it in trust for them.Gawen Lawrie afterwards became deputy governor of East Jersey.Lucas was one of those thoroughgoing Quakers just released from eight years in prison for his religion.** Myers, "Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West Jersey, and Delaware", p.180.
Fenwick also in the end fell into debt and, after selling over one hundred thousand acres to about fifty purchasers, leased what remained of his interest for a thousand years to John Edridge, a tanner, and Edmund Warner, a poulterer, as security for money borrowed from them.They conveyed this lease and their claims to Penn, Lawrie, and Lucas, who thus became the owners, as trustees, of pretty much all West Jersey.
This was William Penn's first practical experience in American affairs.He and his fellow trustees, with the consent of Fenwick, divided the West Jersey ownership into one hundred shares.The ninety belonging to Byllinge were offered for sale to settlers or to creditors of Byllinge who would take them in exchange for debts.The settlement of West Jersey thus became the distribution of an insolvent Quaker's estate among his creditor fellow religionists.
Although no longer in possession of a title to land, Fenwick, in 1675, went out with some Quaker settlers to Delaware Bay.There they founded the modern town of Salem, which means peace, giving it that name because of the fair and peaceful aspect of the wilderness on the day they arrived.They bought the land from the Indians in the usual manner, as the Swedes and Dutch had so often done.But they had no charter or provision for organized government.When Fenwick attempted to exercise political authority at Salem, he was seized and imprisoned by Andros, Governor of New York for the Duke of York, on the ground that, although the Duke had given Jersey to certain individual proprietors, the political control of it remained in the Duke's deputy governor.Andros, who had levied a tax of five per cent on all goods passing up the Delaware, now established commissioners at Salem to collect the duties.
