Oaths of Allegiance in Colonial New England

The antiquity of the custom of giving and taking Oaths, or the debatable questions of their observance being a religious or legal ceremony, and whether the moral or political aspect has the greater effect upon the minds of men, are subjects with which this paper has nothing to do. This book is preoccupied only on discussing oaths of allegiances given starting from the reign of James the First, of England, during which time the providences of God directed the course of the voyage of the Pilgrims away from the Colony of Virginia to their settlement at Plymouth in New England, all the way up to the reign of James the Second, until Sir Edmund Andros, knight, arrived in Boston with a commission to govern New England, and the Colonial period of New England came to an end.