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]
In March 1585, the Bond of Association was in part incorporated in the Act for the Queen's Safety. [7]
Mary, Queen of Scots, also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, was Queen of Scotland from 14 December 1542 until her forced abdication in 1567.
Sir Francis Walsingham was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death and is popularly remembered as her "spymaster".
The Babington Plot was a plan in 1586 to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I, a Protestant, and put Mary, Queen of Scots, her Catholic cousin, on the English throne. It led to Mary's execution, a result of a letter sent by Mary in which she consented to the assassination of Elizabeth.
John Ruthven, 3rd Earl of Gowrie, was a Scottish nobleman who died in mysterious circumstances, referred to as the "Gowrie Conspiracy", in which he and/or his brother Alexander were attempting to kill or kidnap King James VI of Scotland for unknown purposes. The king's retinue killed both brothers during the attack, and the king survived.
Sir James Sempill (1566–1626) was a Scottish courtier and diplomat. He was known by the name of his family estate, Beltrees or Beltries.
Sir Francis Throckmorton was a conspirator against Queen Elizabeth I of England in the Throckmorton Plot.
Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de la Mauvissière was a French soldier and diplomat, ambassador to Queen Elizabeth. He wrote a memoir covering the period between 1559 and 1570.
William Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie, 4th Lord of Ruthven was a Scottish peer known for devising the Raid of Ruthven.
The Raid of Ruthven, the kidnapping of King James VI of Scotland, was a political conspiracy in Scotland which took place on 23 August 1582. It was composed of several Presbyterian nobles, led by William Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie, who abducted the king. The nobles intended to reform the government of Scotland and limit the influence of French and pro-Catholic policy, and to prevent or manage the return of Mary, Queen of Scots from England to rule with her son in an "association". Their short-lived rule of around 10 months is known as the "Ruthven" or "Gowrie Regime".
The 1583 Throckmorton Plot was one of a series of attempts by English Roman Catholics to depose Elizabeth I of England and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots, then held under house arrest in England. The alleged objective was to facilitate a Spanish invasion of England, assassinate Elizabeth, and put Mary on the English throne.
Thomas Hudson, was a musician and poet from the north of England present at the Scottish court of King James VI at the end of the 16th century. Both he and his brother Robert Hudson were members of the Castalian Band, a group of court poets and musicians headed by the King in the 1580s and 1590s.
Sir Henry Killigrew was a Cornish diplomat and an ambassador for the Kingdom of England in the sixteenth century. He was several times employed by Elizabeth I in Scottish affairs and served as one of the English appointees to the Council of State of the Netherlands in the United Provinces in 1586 and 1587–1589. He served as a Member of Parliament for Newport & Launceston in 1553, for Saltash in 1563, and for Truro in 1571–2.
Sir Robert Throckmorton, KG, of Coughton Court in Warwickshire, was a Member of Parliament and a distinguished English courtier. His public career was impeded by remaining a Roman Catholic.
The Safety of the Queen, etc. Act 1584, also known as the Act of Association 1584 was an act of the Parliament of England during the English Reformation. It required a tribunal of at least 24 peers and privy councillors to investigate "any open invasion or rebellion" in England, any attempt to injure Queen Elizabeth I, or any attempt by a pretender to seize the throne. Any person found to be guilty was to be disabled from inheriting the throne, and was to be "pursued to death by all the Queen's subjects." Also any act "whereby the Queen's life shall be shortened" was made a capital offence.
George Seton V, 7th Lord Seton (1531–1586), was a Lord of the Parliament of Scotland, Master of the Household of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Provost of Edinburgh. He was the eldest son of George Seton, 6th Lord Seton, and Elizabeth Hay, a daughter of John Hay, 3rd Lord Hay of Yester. His childhood and schooling were in France.
Tullibardine Castle was a castle located in the village of Tullibardine, 2 miles (3.2 km) north of Auchterarder in Perth and Kinross, Scotland.
George More was an English supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots, and a participant in the Throckmorton Plot. A Catholic exiled in the Spanish Netherlands, he visited the royal court of Scotland in 1598.
Philadelphia, Lady Scrope was an English aristocrat and courtier.
James Stewart (1566–1625), son of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587) and Lord Darnley (1546–1567), was crowned King of Scotland by Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, in the Holy Rude Kirk at Stirling on 29 July 1567.
The Association was the name given to plans in the 1580s for Mary, Queen of Scots, to return to Scotland and rule jointly with her son, King James VI. The plans came to nothing, despite diplomatic efforts.
Ridley, Jasper (1987). Elizabeth I: The Shrewdness of Virtue. Fromm International. p. 254.
O'Day, Rosemary (1995). The Tudor Age. England: Longman Group Limited.