mand, established a legislative body consisting of the
governor's council and a house of eighteen deputies elected by the
freeholders, and the freemen of the corporations of Albany and New York.
With the accession of James as King of England, the province temporarily
lost its popular assembly; in 1688 it was annexed to New England under
the jurisdiction of Andros; and after the Revolution it was distracted
for many years by political quarrels growing out of the Leisler
Rebellion. Yet none of these events interfered with the economic
development of the colony. In 1674 the population was about 7000.
Natural increase, together with immigrants from England and New England,
Huguenot exiles from France, and refugees which the armies of Louis XIV
drove out of the Palatinate, swelled the number to about 25,000 in 1700.
Dutch merchants at Albany did a thriving business in furs; and in 1695
New York City, with a population of 5000, was already the center of an
active trade, mainly West Indian, by no means wholly legal, in
provisions and sugar.

The conquest of New Amsterdam was scarcely completed before the Duke of
York, by "lease and re-lease," and for the sum of ten shillings,
conveyed to his friends, Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, the
territory between the Hudson and the Delaware Rivers, afterwards known
as New Jersey. Dutch settlers already occupied the west shore of New
York Harbor; and there were Swedes as well as Dutch on the lower
Delaware. Favorable concessions offered by the proprietors soon
attracted New Englanders from Long Island and Connecticut, who located
in the region of Monmouth and Middletown. The proprietors nevertheless
found more vexation than profit in their venture; and in 1673 Lord
Berkeley sold his rights to two Friends, John Fenwick and Edward
Byllinge, who were intent upon founding a refuge for the Quakers in
America. Many Quakers soon settled in West Jersey along the Delaware,
and upon the death of Carteret the proprietary rights to East Jersey
were purchased by William Penn and other Friends who had succeeded to
the rights of Fenwick and Byllinge. A mixed population and conflicting
claims made the history of the first Quaker colony a turbulent one. In
1688 both Jerseys were annexed to New York; and in 1702, the proprietors
having surrendered all their rights, the two colonies became the single
royal province of New Jersey.

Of those who were interested in securing a refuge for the Quakers, t