Throgmorton’s plot--of which the Queen of Scots was undoubtedly cognisant, though it was not pressed against her--brought home to every one the danger in which Elizabeth stood (1584). To the Catholic conspiracy, the temptation to take her life was enormous. It was becoming clear that, while she lived, the much talked of insurrection would never come off. The large majority of Catholics would have nothing to do with it--still less with foreign invasion. They would obey their lawful sovereign. But if once Elizabeth were dead, by whatever means, their lawful sovereign would be Mary. The rebels would be the Protestants, if they should try to place any one else on the throne. The Protestants had no organisation. They had no candidate for the crown ready. It was to be feared that no great noble would step forward to lead them. Burghley himself, though longing as much as ever for Mary’s head, had with a prudent eye to all eventualities, contrived some time before to persuade her that he was her well-wisher. Houses of Commons, it is true, had shown themselves strongly and increasingly Protestant. But with the demise of the crown, Parliament, if in being at the time, would be _ipso facto_ dissolved. The Privy Council, in like manner, would cease to have any legal existence. Burghley, Walsingham, and the other new men of whom it was mostly composed, had no power or weight, except as instruments of the sovereign. Her death would leave them helpless. The country would take its direction not from them, but from the great nobles of large ancestral possessions. Nor could they provide for such an emergency by privately selecting a Protestant successor beforehand, and privately organising their partisans. It would have been as much as their lives were worth if their mistress had caught them doing anything of the kind. In this dilemma an ingenious plan suggested itself to them. They drew up a “Bond of Association,” by which the subscribers engaged that, if the Queen were murdered, they would never accept as successor any one “by whom _or for whom_” such act should be committed, but would “prosecute such person to death.”