A, FE. Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 563 
given their lives if they would become executioners.* Sometimes, for 
minor offences, free negroes were condemned to become slaves to the 
Company. This penalty was also applied, on at least one occasion, 
to a white man by Gov. Tucker. By a law enacted in 1668, inter- 
marriage of whites with colored persons or mulattoes was punishable 
by banishment or penal servitude. 
A law was passed by the Assembly, in 1730, that an owner who 
happened to kill one of his own slaves, when punishing him, should 
not be called to account, in any way; but if any one killed a 
slave maliciously he should pay a fine of £10, and also the price of 
the slave, if it belonged to another person. 
On several occasions there were apprehensions of insurrections or 
mutinies among the free colored people and slaves against the whites. 
In November, 1656, such a conspiracy to kill all the whites was dis- 
covered, and nine negroes were tried and convicted. Two were 
executed and others were banished to Eleutheria. On this occasion, 
under Governor Forster, the following and other severe laws were 
enacted. 
(1) It is ordered that from henceforth none of the negroes of 
these Islands to whomsoever they do belong, or of what sort soever 
they are, shall have liberty to straggle or wander from their master’s 
houses or lands after halfe an hour after the setting of the sunne, 
without a passe or tickett under their handes to whom they do 
belonge, w’ch is to be granted only upon some weighty occasion 
moveing thereunto. But such negroes being found stragglinge 
w’thout their leaves or their warrentall Tickett as afores’d, walking 
in the night as afores’d, it shall be at the power of any English man 
that meets such a negroe to kill him then & thiere without mercye. 
And if any such negroe shall refuse to be apprehended, and doth 
resist the Englishman, and he doth not make speedy pursuit against 
him, and shall not forthwith give information to the next magistrat, 
Then he or they for thier neglect therein shall forfeit one hundred 
poundes of tobacco to be expended upon generall service 
* Cases when the same action was taken with white man are recorded in 1628 
and 1631. In some cases, and perhaps generally, colored men were made execu- 
tioners of colored criminals only. 
A negro named John, having been convicted of stealing a boat, Aug. 17, 
1664, was sentenced to be hanged, but the Governor reprieved him on condition 
that he should act as the executioner of negroes. Five days later ‘‘ Black 
Mathew ” having been convicted of house breaking and escaping from jail, was 
hanged at St. George’s, and his severed head, ‘‘ by the Governor’s order,” was 
impaled on a stake at Stocks Point. 
