1650-1654
- 1652 Massachusetts general court rules that the territory of Maine lies within the boundaries of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, thus ending Maine's immediate hopes of independence.
1655-1659
- 1656 (Summer) Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans whip, imprison, and banish the first Quakers to arrive in the colony. Legislation in 1658 bars the Quakers from holding their services, called "meetings."
- 22 September. In Maryland, an all-woman jury, the first in the colonies, acquits Judith Catchpole on charges of murdering her unborn child.
- 1659. 27 October. Quakers William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson are hanged for refusing to leave Massachusetts. Mary Dyer, a follower of Anne Hutchinson and later a Quaker, is scheduled to hang with them but is reprieved at the last minute.
- 1660. 1 June. Mary Dyer is hanged after defying an expulsion order by returning to Boston in May 1660.
- 1661 Massachusetts continues to punish Quakers by hanging those who refuse to leave the colony. After a royal edict requires the Massachusetts authorities to release imprisoned Quakers and return them to England, the authorities instead allow them to leave for other colonies. By December, corporal punishment for Quakers and other dissenters is suspended in the Massachusetts Bay colony by order of Parliament.
- 1664 Maryland Colony passes a law mandating lifetime servitude for black slaves; previous precedent had allowed freedom for those who converted to Christianity and established legal residences there.
- 1664 New Amsterdam becomes New York after Governor Peter Stuyvesant's surrender to English forces.
- 1665 Legislation in several states tightens the bonds of slavery. English law provides that slaves may be freed if they convert to Christianity and establish legal residence, but Maryland, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia pass laws allowing conversion and residence without freeing the slaves.
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