Richard Topcliffe (1532–1604) a landowner and Member of Parliament during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I., was a representative of the ancient family of Topcliffe, of Somerby in Lincolnshire. A visitation of that County, made in 1592, informs us that he was the eldest son of Robert Topcliffe of Somerby, by Margaret, one of the daughters of Thomas Lord Borough, 1 that he married Jane, daughter of Sir Edward Willoughby, of Wollaton in Nottinghamshire; and had issue Charles, his son and heir; three sons, successively named John, who probably died infants, and a daughter, Susannah. He was probably the Richard Topcliffe who was admitted student of Gray’s Inn in 1548. 2 It has been assumed that he was the Richard Topcliffe who, after being matriculated as a pensioner of Magdalene College, Cambridge, in November 1565, proceeded B.A. in 1568–69, and commenced M.A. in 1575. 3 He was a cousin to Sir Edmund Brudenell’s wife. In 1572, he was described as “the Queen’s servant.” He represented Beverley in the Parliament, which met on May 8, 1572 and was returned for Old Sarum to the Parliament of October 20, 1586. After the collapse of the northern rebellion he was a suitor for the lands of Richard Norton (1488?–1588) [q.v.] of Norton Conyers, Yorkshire.

In 1584 a dispute began between Topcliffe and the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Christopher Wray [q.v.], about his claim to the lay impropriation of the prebend of Corringham and Stow in Lincoln Cathedral. Subsequently Topcliffe was regularly employed by Burghley, but in what capacity does not appear and worked mostly for Sir Francis Walsingham and the Privy Council in general; he regarded his authority as deriving directly from Queen Elizabeth I. Sir Francis Walsingham was, perhaps, one of the very worst of the bad men connected with the Council of Elizabeth and Topcliffe. For art in corrupting others, and skill in elevating treachery to the dignity of a science; for ability in planning and carrying out forgery, as well as in arranging for the assassination of inconvenient allies or open enemies, Francis Walsingham was vastly superior to his friend William Cecil.

In 1586 Topcliffe was described as one of her Majesty’s servants, and in the same year was commissioned to try an admiralty case. He held some office about the Court, and for twenty-five years or more he was most actively engaged in hunting out popish recusants, Jesuits, and seminary priests. This employment procured for him so much notoriety that “a Topcliffian custom” became an euphuism for putting to the rack, and, in the quaint language of the Court, “topcliffizare” signified to hunt a recusant. The writer of an account of the apprehension of the Jesuit Robert Southwell [q.v.], preserved among the Bishop of Southwark’s manuscripts, asserts that “because the often exercise of the rack in the Tower was so odious, and so much spoken of by the people, Topcliffe had authority to torment priests in his own house in such sort as he shall think good.” In fact, he himself boasted that he had a machine at home, of his own invention, compared with which the common racks in use were mere child’s play. 4 One may imagine what tortures were committed that were never written down on record. The account of his cruel treatment of Southwell would be incredible if it were not confirmed by admissions in his own handwriting. 5 Great indignation was excited, even among the Protestants, and so loud and severe were the complaints to the Privy Council that Cecil, in order to mitigate the popular feeling, caused Topcliffe to be arrested and imprisoned upon pretence of having exceeded the powers given to him by the warrant; but the imprisonment was of short duration. At a later period Nicholas Owen [q.v.] and Henry Garnett [q.v.] were put to the test of the Topcliffe rack.

Poem
By
Robert Southwell 6
Even as Elias, mounting to the sky,
Did cast his mantle to the earth behind,
So, when the heart presents the prayer on high,
Exclude the world from traffic with the mind:
Lips near to God, and ranging heart within,
Is but vain babbling, and converts to sin.

Topcliffe’s name appears in the special commission against Jesuits which was issued on March 26, 1593. In November 1594, he sued one of his accomplices, Thomas Fitzherbert, who had promised, under bond, to give £5,000 to Topcliffe if he would persecute Fitzherbert’s father and uncle to death, together with Mr. Bassett. Fitzherbert pleaded that the conditions had not been fulfilled, as his relatives died naturally, and Bassett was in prosperity. This being rather too disgraceful a business to be discussed in open Court, “the matter was put over for secret hearing,” when Topcliffe used some expressions which reflected upon the Lord Keeper and some members of the Privy Council. Thereupon he was committed to the Marshalsea for contempt of Court, and detained there for some months. Daring his incarceration he addressed two letters to the Queen, and, in Dr. Jessopp’s opinion, “two more detestable compositions it would be difficult to find.” Topcliffe was out of prison again in October 1595. In 1596 he was engaged in racking certain gipsies or Egyptians who had been captured in Northamptonshire, and in 1597 he applied the torture of the manacles to Thomas Travers, who was in Bridewell for stealing the Queen’s Standish. (Jardine). 7 In 1598 he was present at the execution of John Jones, the Franciscan, whom he had hunted to death. He got possession of the old family house of the Fitzherberts at Padley, Derbyshire, and was living there in February 1603–04. He died before December 3, 1604, when a grant of administration was made in the prerogative Court of Canterbury to his daughter Margaret.

Dr. Jessopp describes Topcliffe as “a monster of iniquity,” and Father Gerard in his narrative of the Gunpowder Plot speaks of the “cruellest Tyrant of all England, Topcliffe, a man most infamous and hateful to all the realm for his bloody and butcherly mind.” 8

A facsimile of a curious pedigree of the Fitzherbert family compiled by him for the information of the Privy Council is given in Foley’s Records. 9 He was reputed to have a vehement temper and became notorious as a priest-hunter and torturer of the time.

It will be appropriate to add that the priests who took the Oath of Supremacy in the reign of Elizabeth verified, to a lamentable extent, the saying of the Anglican satirist, that “a bad Papist makes a worse Protestant.” According to the testimony of such acknowledged Protestant authorities as Burnet, Wharton, Mackintosh, Macaulay and Fronde, the Elizabethan clergy were notoriously ignorant, apathetic, drunken, and immoral. The Queen’s Council (now we see) ordered “a public discussion on the religious questions agitating the Christian mind.” Five Bishops and three doctors of divinity on one side, and eight reformers on the other. Sir Nicholas Bacon and Dr. Heath presided. The whole affair was one of those devices arranged by Cecil to create a stronger sectarian feeling than any already in existence. The conduct of Nicholas Bacon in this affair was that of an undisguised partisan. Such discussions seldom ended in convincing any party. (Burke). 10

Topcliffe harboured a fanatic hatred for Catholics and the Roman Catholic Church, and was involved in the interrogation and torture of many priests and laity, at a time when Catholics were suspected of actively and violently seeking to overthrow the Protestant government of England. He gained a reputation as an effective torturer and a deranged psychopath. He claimed that his own instruments and methods were better than the official ones, and was authorized [by whom?] to create a torture chamber in his private house in London, Westminster. He also involved himself directly in the execution of sentences of death upon Catholic recusants, which involved hanging, drawing and quartering.

Topcliffe’s victims included the Jesuits Robert Southwell (1561–1595), a Jesuit priest and poet who lived and moved in England’s Catholic underground, John Gerard, and Henry Garnet. Topcliffe features numerous times in Fr. Gerard’s autobiography of his days as a hunted priest in Elizabethan England. He’s described as, “old and hoary and a veteran in evil”. It has been surmised that, during interrogations, Topcliffe “may have indulged in bizarre sexual fantasies” about the Queen. He raped one of his prisoners, Anne Bellamy, until she helped him arrest the Jesuit priest Robert Southwell. When Bellamy became pregnant by him in 1592, she was forced to marry his servant to cover up the scandal. He was also the interrogator of the poet Ben Jonson in August 1597 in investigations into the suppressed play, The Isle of Dogs. There are no records showing that any kind of torture had been inflicted upon Ben Jonson, by Topcliffe, at the interrogation.

Sir Anthony Standen, too, praising the Earl of Essex’s agreeable manners in a letter to Mr. Anthony Bacon, of March 3, 1593–94, in Dr. Birch’s papers, says, “Contrary to our Topcliffian customs, he hath won more with words than others could do with racks.” It appears likewise, in another letter in that collection, that Topcliffizare, in the quaint language of the Court, signified to hunt a recusant. Richard Topcliffe, was so much distinguished in the employment, that Topcliffizare became the cant term of the day for inviting a recusant was at this time a follower of the Court; and a letter addressed by him to the Earl of Shrewsbury contains some particulars of this progress worth preserving: “I did never reach her Majesty better received by two counties in one journey than Suffolk and Norfolk now; Suffolk of gentlemen and Norfolk of the meaner sort, with exceeding joy to themselves and well liking to her Majesty.” 11

Amongst the ladies “racked and maltreated” by Topcliffe and Young was Mrs. Wyseman, who lay in prison till the accession of James the First. The penalty for celebrating Mass at this period was a fine of 200 marks, and imprisonment. At another time priests were hanged upon the evidence of one witness, who swore that he saw them celebrating Mass, although the said informer could not distinguish between the Mass and any other Catholic ceremony. Walsingham never looked to the character of a witness where a Papist was the prisoner at the bar. In fact the public trials in the reign of Elizabeth were the most monstrous mockeries of justice that were ever perpetrated in any civilised land. The Tower rack stood in the long vaulted dungeon below the armoury. The cells were underground, with no light but the nicker of a far-off lamp. “The rats were racing about in dozens;” and have been described as “daring in the extreme, and not like any other rats they had ever seen. To add to the horrors of the place, no cat was permitted to enter the infernal regions.” A well-known writer on those times denies the existence of this state of things. He states that the political prisoners lived well in prison, and were permitted to receive the visits of their friends almost daily.

The statements of the prisoners themselves are quite the contrary; and are borne out by the prison records, and even the admissions of the warders. The treatment of the political prisoners differed very much under the various gaolers, whose salary or promotion depended upon the amount of cruelty with which they treated some particular prisoner. The gaolers, with rare exceptions, took bribes, and then betrayed the unfortunate men who placed faith in their words. Many of the prisoners were wholly destitute of money, for on entering a prison all money was taken from them, and if they had a second suit of clothes they quickly disappeared. There was no redress for any outrage committed against political prisoners. Topcliffe used the most abominable language to those strong-minded women who were confined for an honest expression of their religious opinions. Young and Norton were in the habit of using obscene language to female prisoners; but, as usual, there was no redress. From the Wars of the Roses down to “Derwentwater’s Farewell,” the name of Radcliffe occasionally appears in the records of the Tower. Amongst the unhappy prisoners in that fortress about 1576, was Eaglemond Radcliffe, said to be the younger brother of the Earl of Sussex. A strange mystery surrounds the history of this young gentleman. In 1569, he joined the Northern Insurrection with several other men of rank, and having eluded the vengeance of the Queen’s Council, he escaped to Spain, and after leading a wandering life for some years, returned to England in 1575; he was soon arrested, and committed to the Tower, where he remained for several months in a state of prostration from ill-health and bad food. The Queen, having been informed of his condition, “took pity upon the brother of her faithful friend, Lord Sussex.” Elizabeth therefore extended mercy to her prisoner, and Radcliffe was banished from the realm. His love of adventure was seldom checked by the experience of life which misfortune afforded him. He next appeared in the service of Don John of Austria. In Vienna he had a love adventure, and wounded his rival, a Hungarian officer, in a desperate sword combat. In this case he escaped the meshes of the law; was then suddenly arrested, and accused of having been “concerned in a conspiracy against Don John.” He was tried according to the Austrian code, and condemned to death in 1578. Radcliffe protested his innocence in a solemn statement before the Council Chamber, and in his cell, but to no purpose. He was attended to the scaffold by an English Benedictine Father, named Tottenham; so writes his Spanish friend, Don Miguel Cabrera. During his exile, Radcliffe frequently experienced poverty and hardship, especially in Flanders and France walking along a forest track for days half naked and starved. In these sad wanderings he was accompanied by several brave and honourable men, who were outlawed from England and Ireland for their religion. Those poor gentlemen had to depend for support upon the small sums remitted by their friends at home. As usual, the French felt little sympathy for the exiles, and, I may add, that at a later period, the French nation acted in a very ungenerous spirit to the Irish Brigade. Louis XIV., and his successor, with all their grave errors, held in grateful remembrance the services rendered by Irishmen to their country. The public men of France detested the Irish exiles. It is recorded that a French Secretary at War made frequent complaints to Louis the Fifteenth against the Irish Brigade. “Those Irish,” says the minister, “are immensely troublesome; they will not wait for orders; but rush at the enemy like tigers. They are very troublesome.” “C’est exactement,” replied his Majesty. Donald Macpherson, a Borderman of those times, states that it was bruited in a very positive manner that the hero of this narrative was not a Radcliffe, but the natural son of one of the house of Percy, by a Spanish lady of youth, beauty, and fortune. Lady Sydney throws further light upon this romantic story. She affirms that she saw the picture of the Spanish lady in question, who died in London, where she resided many years under the Irish name of MacMahon. Lady Sydney adds: “There was a mystery connected with the history of this good old lady, which was known to very few. Strange to say, some time before her death, our blessed Queen became acquainted with her through some Irish lady, perhaps Elizabeth Fitzgerald, once so noted in Surrey’s Sonnets. Be this as it may, our good-natured Queen knew Madame MacMahon’s sad story, and actually visited her in private, and kindly added to her social comforts in various ways unknown to the world without.” *

Topcliffe died in November or December 1604 in his bed at the age of about seventy-two.