The Throckmorton Plot's exposure hardened Burghley and Walsingham into committing to eliminate Mary, Queen of Scots, first tightening her confinement and then enacting the Bond of Association—a lynch-law provision making Mary liable to death for an assassination plot she may not even know of.
Walsingham's spycraft unmasked the plot and a tortured Throckmorton confessed Mary's role; the aftermath saw Mary's correspondence throttled and a new law passed—the Bond of Association—that in effect condemned her to death for any assassination against Elizabeth. ✦ AI generated
Tom (Rest is History) · The Rest Is History · 2026-08-06 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 58:53
The impact of the thrott Morton plot on Berley and Walssingham is absolutely massive because they are now absolutely set on eliminating Mary Queen of Scots no matter what it costs... This provision is that anyone who is responsible for the death of Elizabeth will be ineligible to succeed her... a further crucial provision has been added. And this states that anyone who is responsible for the death of Elizabeth will be put to death whether they were aware of the assassination plot or not... If a Catholic assassin kills Elizabeth with the aim of putting Mary, Queen of Scots, on the English throne, Mary will be subject to death, even if she didn't know anything about the assassination plot.
verbatim transcript · starts at 58:53
58:33doesn't help. He is convicted for treason, of course, and so therefore he suffers at traitor's fate. He's hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn on the 10th of July, and he dies refusing to ask for the queen's forgiveness, which traditionally people would do because then their their relatives and heirs would be treated better. He refuses to do that. From Wolsingham's point of view, it's, you know, it's been
58:53brilliant. It's been a completely triumphant feat of Spycraft, and it has massive, massive consequences. So let's look at the consequences and let's go through the various people who were involved in the plot as it were the Ayatollah Mikl Gorbachoff and so on and and what the consequences are for them. So let's start with the Duke of Geese. So this is the Mads Mickelson character. So he at first after Throm Morton's um
59:19unmasking that doesn't throw him. He continues with his planning doesn't he? >> Yeah. So Mary, Queen of Scots, manages to get a letter through to him and she is very keen that the plot should carry on and she, you know, she had been queen of France and so um she kind of has investments left from her diary and she says, "Well, you could use money from that to help continue fund the plot." Um
59:41and you know that's what Geese wants to hear. So he says, "Fine, okay, we'll carry on." But then the plot does get knocked on the head and it's nothing that Walsingham or the English do. It's the fact that on the 10th of June 1584, the Duke of Onu, so Elizabeth's frog, you know, this guy who'd been courting him, the guy who had had messed up being the lord of the Netherlands, he dies
60:02from malaria at the age of 29. And this this is fateful because it means with the Duke of Onshu, Henry III, Sir Andrew Scott, the king of France, he has no heir. So with his death, the house of Alwis will go extinct. And the next in line is Henry of Navar, Pedro Pascal, who is the Hugeno, the Protestant. >> Yeah. >> And this is plainly intolerable. So just
60:29as it's intolerable for Protestants in England that Elizabeth should be succeeded by the Catholic Mary, so is it intolerable for Geese and the Catholics in France that Henry III should be succeeded by the Protestant Henry of Navar. So his entire focus now is is on ensuring that this will never happen. and and so the kingdom collapses back into civil war. It's known in France as the war of the three Henry's which I
60:55think is one of the the the great the great names for a war at any time. And basically France will be so consumed by its own agonies that no one there is going to have much time for affairs in England. So that basically is the French now knocked out of calculations. There remains of course the Spanish and in particular Mendoza the Spanish ambassador who's up to his eyeballs in
61:17all this plotting. And so on the 19th of January 1584 he was summoned to meet the privy council and Walssingham in his fluent Italian um lists six charges of conspiracy against him and informs him that he is going to be expelled. Mendoza very angrily and menacingly denies the charges and he says Don Bernardino Mendoza was born not to disturb kingdoms but to conquer them. Wow. However, that