promises of James the duke, and they were forced
to submit to the tyranny of Andros. When that detested viceroy was
expelled from the country, in 1689, the Jerseys were left without a
regular civil government, and so they remained for several years.
Wearied with contentions, with the people of the provinces and with the
government at home, 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. All but Roman Catholics
were granted liberty of conscience; but the bigoted governor always
showed conspicuous favors to the members of the Church of England. The
governor was dishonest and a libertine, and under his rule the people of
New Jersey were little better than slaves. Printing, except by royal
permission, was prohibited in the province, and the traffic in negro
slaves was especially encouraged.

New Jersey remained a dependency of New York, yet with a distinct
legislative assembly of its own, until the year 1738, when it was made
an independent colony, and it so remained until the Revolutionary War,
when it became a separate State. After the province gained its freedom
from New York, Mr. Morris was commissioned its governor. He was the son
of an officer in Cromwell's army, who, about the year 1672, settled on a
farm of three thousand acres on the Harlem River, New York, which was
named Morrisania.

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. There he was
released on parole and went to England, where he died in 1813.

One of the Stevens family having served as governor of North Carolinia,
it was only natural that other members of the southern branch of that
rapidly increasing family in the south should push out into the
Carolinias and take part in the early settlement of these colonies.

After the