The Queen and the Torturer

Determined to rule as absolute monarchs and impose their kind of religion upon their subjects, the Tudors, starting with Henry VIII and culminating in the long reign of his daughter Elizabeth I, shredded England’s constitutional law and its protections so completely that Elizabeth holds the record, by a wide margin, for the number of her subjects interrogated under torture or the threat of it. This book tells, for the first time, the complete story of Elizabeth’s lifelong friend, policeman and torturer-in-chief, a wealthy, well-born Lincolnshire gentleman called Richard Topcliffe, personally responsible for nearly fifty torturings, and present at over sixty executions.