The Connecticut Colonies: England

Wearied with contentions with the people of the provinces and with the government in England, and annoyed by losses in unprofitable speculations, the proprietors of the Jerseys surrendered them to the crown in 1702, when Queen Anne was the reigning British monarch. The government of that domain was then confided to Sir Edward Hyde (Lord Cornbury), whose instructions constituted the supreme law of the land. He was then governor of New York, and possessed almost absolute legislative and executive control within the jurisdiction of his authority. In New Jersey the people had no voice in the judiciary or the making and executing of laws other than recommendatory. Liberty of conscience was granted to all but Roman Catholics, but the bigoted governor always showed conspicuous favors to the members of the Church of England. Under the rule of that dishonest libertine, the people of New Jersey were slaves. Printing was prohibited in the province except by royal permission, and the traffic in negro slaves was specially encouraged.

The province of New Jersey remained a dependency of New York, with a distinct legislative assembly of its own, until the year 1738, when, through the efforts of Lewis Morris, its chief justice, it was made an independent colony, and so continued until the war for independence. Mr. Morris was commissioned the first governor after the province had gained its freedom from New York. He was the son of an officer in Cromwell's army who, at about the year 1672, settled on a farm of three thousand acres on the Harlem River, New York, which was named Morrisania.

The last of the royal governors of New Jersey was William Franklin, son of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, who was appointed, in 1763, and closed his official career in the summer of 1776, when he was deposed by the Continental Congress, and sent under guard to Connecticut, where he was released on parole and sailed for England. He died there in 1813.