The Bond of Association was a document created in 1584 by Francis Walsingham and William Cecil, Lord Burghley after the failure of the Throckmorton Plot in 1583.
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The document obliged all signatories to execute any person that:
In the latter case, it 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 English throne. Ironically, Mary herself was a signatory of the Bond.
Ridley, Jasper (1987). Elizabeth I: The Shrewdness of Virtue. Fromm International. pp. p. 254.
O'Day, Rosemary (1995). The Tudor Age. England: Longman Group Limited.