The Assembly elected in 1716 was violently rent by factions for and against the impatient and impetuous Governor Robert Hunter. Col. Daniel Coxe, who had served for several years in the Council, was removed at Hunter’s request, and forthwith set about getting even. To that end he secured his election to the Assembly in 1714, having cleverly manipulated the “Swedish vote” on his immense paternal estates in the southern part of the Province. He was again chosen in February, 1716, from both Gloucester County and the town of Salem, although Sheriff William Harrison, of Gloucester, was accused of resorting to sharp practice to secure his defeat, by removing the polls several miles from the usual place of holding the election. Coxe declared to serve for Gloucester, and being chosen Speaker on April 4, lodged a complaint against Harrison, had him arraigned at the bar of the House, and by order of that body publicly reprimanded him. Governor Hunter was intensely disappointed at the result of the election, and prorogued the Assembly until May 7. On that day the members in opposition stayed away, to prevent a quorum, but after two weeks the friends of the Governor managed to get together thirteen members—a bare majority,—and elected John Kinsey Speaker in the absence of Coxe, and then proceeded to expel Coxe and his whole party for non-attendance, and moreover declared them incapable forever of sitting in that body. Several of them were re-elected, nevertheless, and were gently but firmly again expelled. I might speak of the action of the West Jersey Assembly in 1685–6, when they “declared to y^e Governor y^t officers of State & Trust belong to them to nominate and appoint.” And to that other assertion of their independence when they refused to recognize the course of the Proprietors in appointing John Tatham as Governor. Even in the opening days of the Revolution, when the friends of the new government were welded by the force of circumstances into a harmonious body, strongly disposed to uphold the patriotic Governor, William Livingston, they nevertheless enunciated an important construction of the constitution, in 1778, in declaring void a patent granted by him, incorporating a church, after the manner of his Royal predecessors, and asserting that “the power of granting patents and charters of incorporation, under the present constitution, is vested solely in the Legislature of the State.”