In the
latter countries, however, where only a few of them lived, it began soon
to be productive of serious consequences; for it was so different from
that which the rest of the inhabitants considered to be proper, that the
latter became alarmed at it. Hence in Barbados an act was passed in
1676, under Governor Atkins, which was entitled, An Act to prevent the
people called Quakers from bringing their Negroes into their meetings
for worship, though they held these in their own houses. This act was
founded on the pretence, that the safety of the island might be
endangered, if the slaves were to imbibe the religious principles of
their masters. Under this act Ralph Fretwell and Richard Sutton were
fined in the different sums of eight hundred and of three hundred
pounds, because each of them had suffered a meeting of the Quakers at
his own house, at the first of which eighty negroes, and at the second
of which thirty of them were present. But this matter was carried still
further; for in 1680, Sir Richard Dutton, then governor of the island,
issued an order to the Deputy Provost Marshal and others, to prohibit
all meetings of this society. In the island of Nevis the same bad spirit
manifested itself.
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