ABSTRACT
This earliest of American covenants, agreed by the future Plymouth Colony settlers on their arrival in the New World, committed each individual signer to each other and to God to create a polity and strive together to achieve their objectives. The theological idea of the covenant went back at least to the Geneva and Zurich covenants of the Reformation and was powerfully present in the outlook of English Puritans. It was no mere legalistic enactment but embedded in God's gift of grace to men and women. William Bradford (1590-1657), from whose History of Plimmoth Plantation this wording is taken, was governor of the colony almost continuously from 1621 to the 1650s. He believed that its survival and modest development flowed from providential aid, in part consequent upon observance of the covenant.
