Despite the issue which provoked the 1664 act,, the Act skirted express mention of religion.
This permitted parties to continue to argue that Christianity freed slaves. In 1671 the General
Assembly nailed this doorway to freedom shut tight by adoption of "An Act for Encouraging the
Importation of Negroes and Slaves into this Province." The act noted that some people were
discouraged from purchasing slaves or from teaching their slaves the doctrines of Christianity or
permitting them to take the sacrament "upon a mistake and ungrounded apprehension that by
becoming Christians they and the Issues of their bodies are actually manumitted and made free and
discharged from their Servitude and bondage."110 The Act in a forceful and repetitious style stated
that becoming a Christian would have no effect whatever on the legal status of a slave or the issue
of slaves.

The use of the term "negroes and other slaves" in the 1664 statute did not mean that all
negroes were made slaves. It seems, rather, to have reflected the reality that most slaves were
negroes although a handful of indians continued to be held in slavery until the eighteenth century.
The negro who could prove free birth or show an indenture would still be free. In 1676 Thomas
Hagleton, an African who had been an indentured servant in England before being brought to
Maryland, succeeded in petitioning for his freedom.'" William Upton's freedom suit brought similar
success in 1678.112 On the other hand, as Charles Cabe discovered, it was not easy to convince a
court that an indenture existed.113

The acts of 1664 and 1671 gave some encouragement to the importation of slaves by
resolving doubts in favor of slave status. Further impetus came from events in England, where a
decline in population and an increase in wages led to a reluctance to emigrate.114 The opportunity
for indentured servants in Maryland to become small planters when freed was also declining and
further discouraging immigration."5 As the black population gradually increased through
importation and birth, the status of the negro worsened. The "Act for keeping a Register of Births
Marriages and Burials in each Respective County" in 1678 required registration of "names Surnames
and places of abode of all manner of persons within this Province Except Negroes Indians &
Mulattoes."116

One event in this period ran counter to the trend of increasing slavery. In 1681 Charles
Calvert, the third Baron of Baltimore, returned to his province with an Irish indentured servant
named Eleanor. That year she married a negro slave. The resulting controversy led Lord Baltimore
to act to repeal the 1664 law.117 The lower house drafted an act which would dissolve marriages
between slaves and free whites, but the upper house responded that it would approve only a bill that
fined the minister, priest or justice performing the marriage, because marriage "Lies not within either
or both the two houses to Dissolve."118

The final version of "An Act concerning Negroes & Slaves -" repeated the durante vita
sections of the 1664 act. It went on to provide that if any master permitted his freebom English or
white servant to marry a slave, she would immediately become free, her children would be free, and
the master fined ten thousand pounds of tobacco. The 1664 Act was repealed with respect to
marriages entered into after 1681.119

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