Richard Topcliffe

Richard Topcliffe (14 November 1531 – late 1604) was an investigator and torturer during the reign of Elizabeth I of England. A landowner and Member of Parliament, he became notorious as the government's chief enforcer of the penal laws against the practice of Catholicism.

Topcliffe was the eldest son of Robert Topcliffe of Somerby, Lincolnshire, and his wife, Margaret, daughter of Thomas Burgh, 1st Baron Burgh of Gainsborough, who had been chamberlain of the household to queen Anne Boleyn. His uncle Edward Burgh was queen Katherine Parr's first husband—so Topcliffe was extremely well-connected. When his father died in 1544, the twelve-year-old Topcliffe became the ward of his uncle, Sir Anthony Neville. In 1548, aged sixteen, like other well-to-do young Elizabethan gentlemen he entered Gray's Inn, though he never practiced law. On coming of age in 1553, he entered upon a large property, over 4,000 acres.

According to his own account, he entered the service of the queen in 1557, a year before her accession, when they were both in their mid-twenties, but he did not begin his service of the state until the northern rebellion of 1569, when he armed a troop of thirty horse at his own expense. In his early years, too, he had served the 6th earl of Shrewsbury, but then became one of Leicester's men. There is no foundation for the frequently-repeated assertion that he worked for Burghley and Walsingham. As an independent, self-financed operator with his own squadron of "instruments" as he called them, he worked with both Burghley and Walsingham under commission from the Privy Council, and was on very good terms with them both, though he always considered himself the queen's personal servant and friend.

He represented Beverley in Parliament in 1572. He would later return to Parliament as MP for Old Sarum in 1584 and 1586.

Topcliffe, one of nature's policemen, was a tireless agent of the English government's determination to eradicate Catholicism from England. At the height of his power, from the late 1580s until 1595, he hunted, captured, arrested, and interrogated many prisoners - often with torture. Topcliffe's infamous interrogations took place either in the Tower of London, in Bridewell prison, or even at his own house in Westminster, next to the Gatehouse prison. Exiled Catholic intelligencer Richard Verstegan regularly reported on Topcliffe's activities, condemning him "whose inhuman cruelty is so great, as he will not spare to extend any torture whatsoever". His favorite method (which he may have introduced) was to hang a prisoner by the hands in the gauntlets or manacles, a procedure which, though exquisitely painful, left no permanent injury if properly administered. Improperly administered, it caused permanent internal injury and even death. There is some evidence that he used psychological torture as well, keeping prisoners awake, for instance.

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