Barbados Slave Code
(1661 – 1667)

Introduction

The Barbados Slave Code was initially passed in 1661, shortly after the restoration of Charles II. Many scholars have viewed this law as the first attempt to comprehensively codify the chattel slave system in England’s Empire, one that was done locally and then copied in other English colonies and promoted by the crown. Barbados was, at the time, a society in transformation. It had been an economy characterized by small-scale subsistence farming, with labor provided mostly by white indentured servants and a relatively small number of enslaved Africans. In the previous decade, sugar production and the plantation complex had ballooned, as had the importation of enslaved Africans. The Governor of Barbados at the time was Humphrey Walrond, whom Charles II had appointed with the approval of the proprietary governor, Francis Willoughby.  Walrond was a staunch royalist: after surrendering to Parliamentary troops in 1645, he had migrated to Barbados in 1647, where Governor Philip Bell appointed him to the Council, Barbados’ governing body.

In late 1649 and early 1650, Walrond helped to lead a royalist coup on the Island.  In 1651, after Cromwell sent troops to regain control of Barbados, he was one of only two leaders (Francis Willoughby was the other) to be banished on the order’s of the Commonwealth General.  During the 1650s Walrond spent much time among the Spanish: presumably he gave them valuable information about the English and the Island, since the King of Spain knighted him and ennobled him for his services in 1653.

In 1661, after the Restoration, new Governor Walrond called an assembly and asked them to ratify a slave code that he and his appointed Council had seemingly already written. The Barbadian Assembly then rejected it. Walrond prorogued the assembly soon afterward, and called new elections, which he as governor was empowered to do.  He informed the new assembly that the King had ordered him to repeal all the laws of Barbados passed during the 1650s during the “Interregnum”  and then to pass a slate of laws on topics ranging from the settling of estates to laws governing “Negroes” as well as a separate set of rules for “Servants.”  The new assembly passed all six on September 27, 1661.¹TNA CO 31/1, pp. 63, 64 (Minutes of the Barbados Assembly, Sept 27, 1661). Also see the summary of the entry for this date in the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 5:57. The Governor dissolved the assembly on 19 July, 1661, accusing them of disloyalty, see TNA CO 31/1, pp. 56-60.

The 1661 version of the code has not survived in its original form. The manuscript copy below is the amended 1667 version, the earliest one to survive. In a world where so many Barbados records from this era were destroyed by hurricanes, this copy survives because it was sent back to England. In 1667, when Charles II resumed full royal control over the colony, he requested that a copy of all laws in force in Barbados in 1667 be sent to his Council on Foreign Plantations, the legal body that had oversight over colonial policies and that reported to Charles II’s Privy Council. The cover letter to the collection of laws sent to Charles II specified that it contained the versions of all these laws as they were in force in 1667. The records of the Barbados Assembly shows that the law was amended in the meantime. Its appearance as a law “in force” but that had been amended, and the fact that the law was out of the original order in the collection indicates that the version from 1667 was not (quite) the original 1661 version of the law.

What is confusing is that this law continued to be slightly amended until 1688, with a few longer amendments that appeared as separate laws.² See 1699 published edition of Barbados laws, p. 156, which listed the 1661 act as number 57 (repealed) and replaced by Act 329. This published edition of the laws still listed the servant code, also regularly if slightly amended, as passed in 1661, still with Walrond’s signature (see p. 33). Barbados. The Laws of Barbados Collected in One Volume by William Rawlin, of the Middle-Temple, London, Esquire, and Now Clerk of the Assembly of the Said Island [Laws, etc.]. London: 1699  However despite such amendments, it retained its designation as the Barbados Slave code of 1661, complete with Walrond’s signature, even though he was no longer governor. It makes the issue particularly confusing for historians. This “updating” of the law with revisions passed by later assemblies should be understood as a means of retaining its authority but also making the law in practice the updated version.  After all, collections of colonial laws were made for the benefit of those then using them. They were not particularly interested in the evolution of the text of the laws over time in the way that we would be today.  This law was comprehensively rewritten in 1688, at which point Walrond’s name and the date (1661) finally disappeared.

Two other manuscript copies exist, one at the Huntington library, which from internal evidence seems to be a later version. Another manuscript copy at the Barbados National Archives appears to have been copied from this version at the National Archives early in the twentieth century.  

 It is interesting to compare this document to the first Jamaican Slave code (1664), which was based, as the new governor there admitted, on the Barbados code of 1661.  It is also interesting to compare it to  Queen Elizabeth’s Statute of Artificers from 1603, which laid the legal basis for England’s master/servant code. . How important is bound labor to the organization of society? How does explicit racism factor into this code?

There are three known copies of the Barbados Slave Code from the 1660s. This copy of the Barbados Slave Code in the Huntington Library (California) includes an archival note dating the copy to 1661, which would make it the earliest copy of the act. But this is incorrect. The Huntington copy contains legal clauses and additions that date to Council amendments and acts passed later in the 1660s, and the penmanship indicates the version may be a copy made in a later period. There is no known extant version of the 1661 Barbados Slave Code. The copy from The National Archives (United Kingdom), though dated to 1661, is actually from 1667, and includes amendments passed in 1664 and 1667. The copy in the Barbados National Archives appears to be a copy made from The National Archives version sometime in the early 20th century.

Holly Brewer

Jamie Gemmell

QUESTIONS TO READERS:

1) What is the purpose of the act? Why does Walrond and the Assembly enact it?

2) What sorts of provisions are contained in the act? What regulations are placed on enslaved persons? On Masters/Mistresses/Overseers? On white inhabitants on the island?

3) What differences can you spot between the two versions of the Barbados Slave Code (TNA and Huntington)? What did the later amendments and changes seek to fix?

4) How do the regulations and requirements in the Barbados Slave Code compare to the Jamaica Slave Code? To the Elizabethan Statute of Artificers?