17th Century

Colonial North America’s slave trade begins when the first American slave carrier, Desire, is built and launched in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts became the first North American colony to recognize slavery as a legal institution.

The New England Confederation of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven adopts a fugitive slave law.

A group of 11 enslaved people in New Amsterdam (modern-day New York) successfully petition the government there in what is the first group manumission in a North American colony.

Connecticut legalizes slavery.

Massachusetts requires all black and Indian servants to receive military training.

A Virginia court grants blacks the right to hold slaves.

Cromwell became Lord Protector and ruled with a council, which drew up a new constitution called the Instrument of Government.

Cromwell dissolves his council and sets up a new English parliament, Protectorate Parliament, which refused to accept the Instrument of Government, so it was dissolved.

Anthony Johnson, a black Englishman, sued Robert Parker, a white Englishman, over a black slave, John Casor in a colonial court and won. The court ruled Casor to be returned to Anthony Johnson to serve as a slave for life, and for Parker to pay all court costs.

Elizabeth Key, who’s father was a white Englishwoman, sued for her freedom and that of her son, John, in colonial court and won their freedom.

The freedom lawsuit of a mixed-race woman named Elizabeth Key in 1655 brought before a colonial court drove Virginia’s House of Burgesses, its legislative assembly to purport to enact a law that authorized slavery in the 1660s.

Virginia passes a fugitive slave law.

Richard Ligon publishes A True and Exact Historie of the Island of Barbadoes in London. The book contained one of the first detailed descriptions of a British slave plantation, and gave rise to the story of Inkle and Yarico.

George Fox, the Quaker leader, writes a letter ‘To Friends beyond sea, that have Blacks and Indian Slaves’. This is the first letter written by a Quaker expressing some doubts about slavery in the New World.

England’s monarchy is reinstated, as well as Parliament and which is conferred supreme legislative power to enact positive law both provincial and over local governments. The eldest son of King Charles I… Charles II becomes King.

The newly restored King Charles II of England charters the ‘Royal Adventurers into Africa’, the first English state-sponsored slave trading company and orders the Council of Foreign Plantations to devise strategies for converting slaves and servants to Christianity.

Virginia’s House of Burgesses enacts a colonial statute legalizing slavery in Virginia. Virginia’s legislative assembly lacks plenary authority to legalize slavery or to create a class of colonists called slave by English law. Virginia’s colonial statute is void ab initio since neither England’s King or the Parliament gives assent or ratifies colonial statute.

Virginia is the first colony to take legal action against marriages between white women and black men. The first anti-miscegenation statute – prohibiting marriage between races – was written into law.

The Cavalier Parliament first met and sat until January 1679: The bishops sat again in the Lords and the Act of Uniformity enforced conformity to the English Church.

The Staple Act required all goods destined for American colonies from foreign ports be shipped, unloaded, inspected, and repacked at England ports with duties assessed before transport to the colonies.

In Gloucester County, Virginia, the first documented slave rebellion in the colonies takes place.

Maryland legalizes slavery.

Charles II, King of England, gives the Carolinas to proprietors.

New York and New Jersey legalize slavery.

Maryland passes black slave laws in contradiction to English law, but justified it on the grounds that slavery was a valuable source of labor.

King Charles II granted a charter to settle in Carolina.

Maryland passes a fugitive slave law.

Virginia declares that Christian baptism will not alter a person’s status as a slave.

New Jersey passes a fugitive slave law.

The State of Virginia prohibits free blacks and Indians from keeping Christian (i.e. white) servants.

Charles II agreed in the secret treaty of Dover to convert to Catholicism in exchange for French subsidies.

George Fox, generally called the founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), influences agitation among Quakers against slaveholding by Society members when he speaks against slavery on his visit to North America.

A group of Quakers, including George Fox and William Edmundson, visit Barbados and appear to have come into conflict with the Barbadian plantocracy for suggesting that slave-owners should treat their slaves with humanity and attempt to convert them to Christianity.

The King of England charters the Royal African Company, which becomes England’s major slave-trading organization into the 1730s.

The cartographer Richard Blome publishes A Description of the Island of Jamaica in London, which describes slavery in Jamaica for a popular audience.

The Act of 1673 stated that all goods not sailing from England ports to America be assessed duties and taxes paid at the colonial port to the governor before receipt.

The Puritan Richard Baxter publishes antislavery material in A Christian directory, or, a summ of practical theologie, and cases of conscience (London, 1673).

The financially troubled French West India Company is replaced by the Compagnie du Sénégal (Senegal Company). Under various name changes, this remains the main French slave trading company into the 1720s.

Parliament passed a Test Act to prevent Catholics from holding office, by which the successor to the throne, James, Duke of York, had to resign.

New York declares that blacks who convert to Christianity after their enslavement will not be freed.

Butts versus Penny, the English Court of King’s Bench ordered ten blacks suing for their freedom to remain the rightful property of their master “until they become Christians; and thereby they are Infranchised.”

Four peers were imprisoned by the House of Lords for claiming that Parliament was automatically dissolved because it had not met for over a year.

Parliament passed a Test Act to prevent Catholics from sitting in Parliament.

The first Exclusion Parliament met: the Commons drafted a Bill to exclude the Duke of York from the succession.

The State of Virginia forbids blacks and slaves from bearing arms, prohibits blacks from congregating in large numbers, and mandates harsh punishment for slaves who assault Christians or attempt escape.

The Anglican Morgan Godwin publishes The Negro’s and Indians advocate, suing for their admission into the Church (London, 1680).

The second Exclusion Parliament met: the Exclusion Bill was defeated in the Lords.

The third Exclusion Parliament met at Oxford for only a week, the last time Parliament met outside Westminster.

The Tory Reaction saw purges, prosecutions, and executions of prominent Exclusionists, or Whigs, as they were now called.

Pennsylvania Colony, later to become a centre of antislavery thought, was founded by a grant to William Penn by King Charles II.

Virginia declares that all imported black servants are slaves for life.

New York makes it illegal for slaves to sell goods.

In London, Thomas Tryon publishes two tracts critical of slavery: ‘The Negro’s Complaint of Their Hard Servitude, and the Cruelties Practised upon Them’ and ‘A Discourse in Way of Dialogue, between an Ethiopean or Negro-Slave and a Christian, That Was His Master in America’. These appeared as parts II and III of Friendly Advice to the Gentlemen-Planters of the East and West Indies (London, 1684).

Charles II died in February and James II’s Parliament first met in May, but after November was continuously prorogued until it was dissolved in July 1687.

Godden v Hales allowed James II to dispense individuals from Test Acts. The bishop of London was suspended from his office for not taking action against an anti-Catholic preacher.

Hans Sloane boards a Royal Navy frigate at Portsmouth to begin a voyage to Barbados and Jamaica in which he observed both the wildlife of the islands and the treatment of enslaved people. His journey was written up years later in his celebrated two-volume A Voyage to Jamaica (London, 1707, 1725).

James II issued his Declaration of Indulgence for Nonconformists and sent agents to find potential Parliament members who would vote for repeal of the Test Acts.

Parliament passed an Act establishing a Commons’ Commission of Public Accounts to oversee the Crown’s use of the revenue.