Ritual time in British Plantation Colonies, 1650-1780

Church History, Sept, 2007 by Nicholas M. Beasley

Similarly in Jamaica, a minister found that working six days for their masters did not obviate slaves' need to work for themselves on Sunday, the alternative being starvation. (84) Jamaican clergymen regretted that the three towns on the island "hold their great weekly market on Sunday Morning from day light till an hour before Church time," the "Negro Markets" supervised by parish authorities. (85) In 1736, the vestry of Port Royal parish in Jamaica ordered its constables to "attend with their Staff's on Sunday Morning next at the Negroe Markett, in Order to See there be no Injustice done to the Negroes," a mysterious and rare intervention in favor of Afro-Jamaicans. (86) Whites complained that Afro-Barbadians used Sunday for "drumming, dancing, and riot, practicing frenzied incantations over the graves of their deceased relatives and friends." (87) In the hands of slaves, the Christian Sabbath thus offered an interstice of economic and personal freedom amidst six days of domination. (88)

Their Sunday initiatives were not welcomed by white authorities. Persistent complaints and ineffectual regulation mark white responses to slaves' use of Sunday. Barbados legislation of 1688 required that no master "give their Negroes or other Slaves leave on Sabbath-days, Holidays, or any other time, to go out of their Plantations, except such Negro or other Slave, as usually wait upon them at home or abroad, wearing a Livery." (89) The island's slave patrol was charged with the enforcement of that law. (90) In Jamaica's Port Royal, the constables were ordered by the vestry one Sunday to go to the Negro Market "in the Afternoon in Order to destroy the Drums and other Noisy Instruments to Prevent the Disorders that arise from their Caballing and Dancing." (91) Time and again, the Carolina grand jury took note "that it is a Grievance that the Negroes are suffered publickly to cabal in the Streets of this Town on the said Day, while the Inhabitants are at divine Service, which if not timely presented may be of fatal Consequences to the Province." (92) Carolina legislation also forbade allowing slaves access to firearms when away from home at any time between Saturday sunset and Monday sunrise. (93)

A law in Carolina and prudence elsewhere required white worshippers to attend church well armed. Johann Martin Bolzius told his German audience that in Carolina "one goes to church with swords, guns, and pistols." (94) The announcement of that law in 1739 may have contributed to the timing of the Stono Rebellion, which began on a Sunday morning just weeks before the legislation took effect. (95) The Antiguan conspiracy of 1736 was furthered during Sunday dancing in a pasture outside the town of St. John's. (96) Sunday was a persistently dangerous day for planters in the plantation colonies. (97) The order that plantation Christians diligently imposed on the passage of time thus gave one day of the week a greater potential for disorder.

III. GREAT FESTIVALS: CHRISTMAS, EASTER, AND WHITSUNDAY