It is already January 26, in this 350th year of the existence of New Jersey. I think it is time to publish a short history of New Jersey, the sort of preamble I generally use for my house histories. It glides breezily over some very complicated proceedings, but sometimes a shorthand version is useful. (This little essay is not meant for those who make a study of New Jersey’s convoluted history.)
So—without more ado—How New Jersey Began.
In a previous post related to Dr. Daniel Coxe, I described a lawsuit involving himself and John Hooke. Hooke had hoped to establish a settlement in America for Dissenters persecuted by the popish policies of Charles II and James II. Once the Glorious Revolution had taken place, things took on a different complexion.
After a long digression to write about the life of Dr. Daniel Coxe before he became governor of West New Jersey in 1687, I am returning to my chronology to study the events of 1688 et seq., beginning with the Burlington Court session of February 1688, in which the list of those present began with “Daniell Coxe Esq. Governour.”
If ever there was a case where armchair research fails to deliver, this must be it. To properly understand who Dr. Daniel Coxe was, I need to go to London. But that isn’t going to happen any time soon. I must make do with what I can get my hands on, and believe me, it is not enough. Not even Samuel Pepys can help me, for he was no longer writing his diary by this time.
After a few years spent mixing with the virtuosi in London and playing with volatile salts in his laboratory, Daniel Coxe bethought himself to get a wife. He married Rebecca Coldham, the daughter of John Coldham, Esq. of Tooting Graveney, London. I’m not kidding; Tooting Graveney, actually has its own page in Wikipedia. It is considered a suburb of London, on the south side of the Thames, and was probably quite rural in the 1670s. John Coldham was an Alderman of London and warden of the Grocers Company, from which I conclude that he was a successful merchant with political connections, an ideal father-in-law for an ambitious man.
A treatise published in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions by Georgii Wedelii on Volatile Salts in 1673 was followed by a notice from the editor, which read:
“So much of this Author; whose way not being here made out and declared, we hope, a Learned and very known Member of the R. Society, Doctor Daniel Coxe, will shortly supply the world with that defect, he being certainly and experimentally master of a sure and easy way of extracting the volatile Salt out of all sorts of Plants.”
That is how Dr. Daniel Coxe was described in 1670 by Christopher Merrett in a pamphlet on the “Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries.”
It appears I have gotten my chronology wrong. The last post on Dr. Daniel Coxe concerned his early medical career, which began in 1669, when he was licensed at Cambridge to practice medicine. It had been my impression that Coxe was a medical man first, and a scientist second. But I now realize that his scientific experiments pre-dated his medical profession.
All right. Here’s the problem with history research. The more you learn, the more questions you have. If you’re not a curious person, it’s no problem. But if you are, then you are headed down unknown highways and even roads less traveled. I have always skimmed over the statement that Daniel Coxe was a physician to Charles II and Queen Anne. But, as it turns out, that is a road worth taking.
While reading an article about the ‘Monster’ Petition of 1680 by Mark Knights, I came across a reference to Daniel Coxe. He was a signer of the ‘Monster’ Petition, which meant he objected to the decision by Charles II to dissolve Parliament just before it was set to pass the Exclusion Act, which would have barred James Duke of York from becoming king, or anyone else belonging to the Catholic religion. This seems like a risky thing to do for someone who was “on the make,” as most historians describe Dr. Coxe.
I thought I’d choose for my first post an old Hunterdon family whose roots I have been trying to trace for years. The idea came from a discussion on the Fox family of Kingwood Township that took place on the Hunterdon mailing list on Rootsweb.
