The idea of covenant was at the heart of early New England society. In this important book David Weir explores the origins and development of covenant thought in America by analyzing the civil and church documents generated and signed by seventeenth-century New Englanders.

Unmatched in its breadth of study, this volume takes into account "all" of the surviving covenants in "all" of the New England colonies. This comprehensive survey of seventeenth-century covenants leads to a more complex picture of early New England commitments than portrayed in famous civil covenants like the Mayflower Compact. Weirbs work shows covenant theology being transformed into a covenantal vision for society, but also reveals the stress and strains on church and state relationships that eventually led to more secularized colonial governments in eighteenth-century New England. He concludes that New England colonial society was much more bEnglishb and much less bAmericanb than has often been thought, and that New England colonies substantially mirrored religious and social change in Old England.