Hysteria about possible involvement in rebellion led to execution of the "culprits" without benefit of clergy.  Burning at the stake, slow death by strangulation, and allowing part or all of the corpse to rot above ground were accepted in many areas.  In seventeenth-century Virginia, before the plantation economy required large numbers of bondsmen, the threat of insurrection could be handled more "humanely."  The archives of the county court of Westmoreland County described a punishment inflicted in 1688:

Sam, a negro servant of Richard Metcalfe, has several times tried to start a Negro insurrection in this colony.  To deter him & others from the like practice, the sheriff of James City County or deputy will administer a severe whipping to the slave pulled behind a cart from prison around the town to the gallows & then to prison.  Then sent to Westmoreland County where the sheriff will severely whip him at the next court.  During that time he was to have a halter around (his) neck.  The strong iron collar fixed to his neck with four spriggs [a wedge-shaped nail).  He wears this forever.  He is never to leave [his] master's plantation.  If he takes off [the] collar or leaves [the] plantation, he is hanged.  [The sheriff was ordered to give him 29 lashes to the bare back.]'

AFRICANS IN THE SOUTH         Pgs. 102 – 103.

Information has just reached us of the escape, on Sunday night last, from a place called White Point, in Westmoreland County, of a party of some forty negroes or more.  This they managed to effect by using a seine boat belonging to Mr. Gouldman, the owner of the property at this place.  The slaves belonged as fellows: 10 to estate of Robert.  H. Montgomery, deceased; 8 to Mr. Gouldman; 4 to W. D. Watson; 5 to Fielding Lewis; all of Miss Mary Dishman's, number not known; one to T. L. Hunter; one belonging to Mr. Coleman, of this county, and hired to R. H. Hudson, King George O.H.  The last man is said to be very valuable.  It is also reported that several belonging to R. H. Turner and Dr. Greenlaw have gotten off.

We further hear that the citizens attach great blame to the military authorities for this wholesale loss of property, and appeal most urgently and earnestly to the powers that be at Richmond to give that truehearted but defenseless people some little measure of protection and some immunity from this wholesale deprivation of property.  It is a little singular that so soon as Col. Arnold and his militia force retired that these outrages should be perpetrated.