The Bond of Association was a document created in 1584 by Francis Walsingham and William Cecil after the failure of the Throckmorton Plot in 1583. Its purpose was to deter attempts to assassinate Elizabeth I.[1] [2]
The document obliged all signatories to execute any person that:
In the last case, the document also made it obligatory for the signatories to hunt down the killer.
Elizabeth authorised the Bond to achieve statutory authority.
The Bond of Association was a response to the assassination of William the Silent in July 1584, and the continuing threat posed to Elizabeth I by the supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots as a rival claimant to the English throne, in the aftermath of the discovery of the Throckmorton Plot.[3] [4]
The Bond was a key legal precedent for the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587.[5] Walsingham discovered alleged evidence that Mary, in a letter to Anthony Babington, had given her approval to a plot to assassinate Elizabeth and by Right of Succession take the English throne. Ironically, Mary herself was a signatory of the Bond.[6] [7]
In March 1585, the Bond of Association was in part incorporated in the Act for the Queen's Safety.[8]
Book: Ridley , Jasper . Elizabeth I: The Shrewdness of Virtue . Fromm International . 1987 . 254 .
Book: O'Day , Rosemary . The Tudor Age . Longman Group Limited . 1995 . England .