In response to the plethora of recent Catholic conspiracies to depose Elizabeth I, William Cecil and Francis Walsingham write the Bond of Association, which is then signed by others of her Privy Councillors and loyal servants. These signatories thus declare that they will defend the Queen and kill the perpetrators of her assassination. Historian Patrick Collinson has also argued for its revolutionary nature, since it appears to distinguish between the person and the role of the monarch, effectively envisaging a interim republic after such an assassination.