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 key legal precedent for the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587. 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.[3]
In March 1585, the Bond of Association was in part incorporated in the Act for the Queen's Safety.[4]
Ridley, Jasper (1987). Elizabeth I: The Shrewdness of Virtue. Fromm International. p. 254.
O'Day, Rosemary (1995). The Tudor Age. England: Longman Group Limited.