In 1661, the Barbadian Assembly passed the first comprehensive slave code in the English Americas to ‘better manage its profitable but unruly slave society’. The Act was entitled ‘An Act for the better ordering and governing of Negroes’. The Barbadian slave code was the ‘premier slave code in the English colonies’ by early eighteenth century due to its central role in launching slave codes throughout the English slave holding territories such as Jamaica, Antigua and South Carolina. This codified legislation was an innovation of English police law, property law, laws of villeinage, martial law and various vagrancy regulations. This paper delves into pre-colonial English society to identify various laws comparable with colonial slave legislation, examining whether these influenced the various slave codes, to decipher what exactly was adapted, borrowed or transplanted into the colonial slave laws. The Slave Act's preamble stated that the law's purpose was to ‘protect them (the slaves) as we do men's other goods and chattels’. Confirming that African slaves would be legally treated and seen as chattel property. English Property law and villeinage are the epicentres of the origin arguments as both contribute to the slaves as chattel phenomenon. Hence, this presentation also analyses and ascertains slave status definition in colonial West Indian law. Ultimately, transplantation was central to development within colonial legislation, not only legal transplants from England to the colonies but throughout the Atlantic world. What this inter and intra connectivity of laws meant for the region’s development is the essence of this research.