License to Kill: Assassination and the Politics of Murder in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England

Abstract

If we understand “assassinations” to be the targeted killing of public figures by people who believe themselves to be acting in the public interest, then the history of modern assassination begins in late sixteenth-century Europe. Prompted by the observation that the word itself was new to late sixteenth-century English, this article examines the altered scope and significance of political killings in post-Reformation England. Individuals from a broad range of backgrounds came to think themselves authorized to shape their polity by killing their leaders. Their efforts, along with authorities’ responses to such plots, speak to an increasingly participatory political culture. Murder had long been a political tool; but as politics changed, this article argues, so too did the nature and meanings of political killings.