Slavery and Power in Early English America: Feudalism, Oathtaking, and the Centrality of Allegiance

Legal ideas about allegiance and loyalty were crucial to gaining access to the privileges of power or the status of subjects in early seventeenth century English America. At the same time, the inability to take such oaths helped to define and legitimate the earliest elements of slavery by turning infidels into legal serfs or villeins, the first stepping stone-towards slavery. The evidence about oathtaking is in fact pervasive, spurred by colonial charters and a new historical interest in discovering ancient principles of English governance. Henry Spelman, at once historian, lawyer, and the drafter of many of the earliest English charters invented/described/discovered the idea of “feudal” in ancient records and incorporated such principles into the early charters for at least five colonies. On the ground, oath taking (or the inability to do so) became central to negotiations about power, from early governors’ decrees that conferred the status of villeins on those who could not take oaths, such as that issued by Barbados’ Governor Hawley in 1635. Negotiations over oaths were also central to a rebellion on Antigua spurred by demands by the colonial governor of obedience to the proprietor (as opposed to the king). This paper thus meditates on oaths---as contracts of obedience to master, proprietors and kings as at the center of disputes over power.