The Palatine Emigration. 



Ill 



Luttrell in his Diary observes " 1709, April 28. Fo- 

 reign letters advise, that the Elector Palatine, upon many- 

 Protestant families leaving his dominions, and gone for 

 England to be transported to Pennsylvania, has published 

 an order making it death and confiscation of goods, for 

 any of his subjects to quit their native countries." 



Although the direct proofs may be wanting, there is a 

 fair presumption that the parties, who urged and were 

 successful in securing the passage of this law, were inti- 

 mately connected with companies and individuals who 

 were proprietors of land in America, and that they had 

 stimulated a movement by their agents, which, very readily 

 was embraced by an oppressed people, who flattered them- 

 selves that the British government had engaged to provide 

 for them. The lords-proprietors of Carolina seem to 

 have been remarkably ready on the arrival of the first 

 thousands in June, 1709, to publish in the Gazette an offer 

 to give every one of those Palatines a thousand acres of 

 land, on a pepper-corn rent, though they demanded that 

 the government should pay £8 for every adult's transporta- 

 tion, and £4 for every child. 1 



Bishop Burnet observes : " Some of our merchants, who 

 were concerned in the plantations, and knew the advantage 

 of bringing over great numbers to people those desert 

 countries, encouraged them with the promise of lands and 

 settlements there. This being printed and spread through 

 those parts, they came to Holland in great bodies ; the Ana- 

 baptists there were particularly helpful to them, both in 

 subsisting those in Holland and in transporting them to 

 England." 2 



Mortimer, in his History of England, adds : " It was never 

 known who encouraged them to this emigration. Certain 

 it is, there was no settled or concerted plan for their 



1 State of the Palatines, p. 12. 



3 Burnet's Own Time. 



