John Berkeley Sells West New Jersey to the Quakers (1673)
On March 18, 1673, John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton, sold his undivided half-interest in the Province of New Jersey to a group of English Quakers for £1,000. The sale severed West Jersey from its royalist origins and opened the colony to a wave of religious dissenters seeking refuge from persecution in England, permanently altering the demographic and political character of the region.
A Royalist's Colonial Venture
John Berkeley had earned his title through fierce loyalty to the Crown, commanding forces at the 1643 Battle of Stratton in Cornwall, where Royalist troops crushed Parliament's field army. His subsequent closeness to James, Duke of York, translated into royal favor and, in 1664, a substantial land grant. Alongside Sir George Carteret, Berkeley received the newly conquered Dutch territory between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers, which the two men named New Jersey after Carteret's home island of Jersey. Berkeley, then in his sixties and heavily involved in court politics and diplomatic service, took a mostly passive role in actually developing the colony. He held the western portion of the province but showed little interest in the day-to-day work of recruiting settlers or establishing governance. By the early 1670s, distracted by mounting political troubles in England and lacking any personal stake in colonial administration, Berkeley decided to liquidate his American holdings rather than continue managing a distant, unprofitable venture.
Did You Know?
The £1,000 Berkeley received for half of New Jersey in 1673 would be worth well over £150,000 in today's currency, yet it represented just a fraction of the colony's eventual value. William Penn, who helped arbitrate the resulting Quaker ownership dispute, went on to found Pennsylvania just eight years later in 1681, using lessons learned from West Jersey's governance.
The Quaker Purchase
On March 18, 1673, Berkeley sold his half of New Jersey, later known as West Jersey, to John Fenwick, acting on behalf of Edward Byllynge, for £1,000. Both men were English Quakers, members of the Religious Society of Friends who faced severe legal and social persecution in England under the Conventicle Acts. The sale offered Quakers an unprecedented opportunity: a large tract of American land where they could practice their faith without fear of imprisonment or fines. A dispute soon arose between Fenwick and Byllynge over the terms of ownership, eventually settled through arbitration by fellow Quaker William Penn, who would later found Pennsylvania using similar principles of religious tolerance. The resulting arrangement divided West Jersey's proprietary interests among numerous Quaker shareholders, setting a precedent for the collaborative, tolerance-based colonial governance that Penn would later expand upon dramatically.
Legacy for Colonial America
The 1673 sale had consequences far beyond a simple property transaction. West Jersey quickly became a haven for Quaker immigrants, who established settlements including Burlington in 1677, governed under the progressive 1677 Concessions and Agreements, a document guaranteeing religious freedom, trial by jury, and limits on taxation without representation. These principles foreshadowed ideas that would later appear in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Meanwhile, Carteret retained East Jersey until his death in 1680, after which it too passed largely into Quaker and other proprietary hands. Berkeley, for his part, used the proceeds and continued his career in royal service, later serving as ambassador to France, before his death in August 1678. His name endures in New Jersey's Bergen County area and various local place names, but his lasting historical significance rests primarily on this single transaction, which redirected the colony's future toward religious pluralism rather than strict royalist control.