Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/59

 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. During 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 (, Reading on the Use of Torture in England, pp. 41, 99, 101). 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 1603–4. He died before 3 Dec. 1604, when a grant of administration was made in the prerogative court of Canterbury to his daughter Margaret.

He married Jane, daughter of Sir Edward Willoughby of Wollaton, Nottinghamshire, and by her had issue Charles, his heir; three other sons named John who probably died in infancy; and two daughters, Susannah and 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’ (, Condition of Catholics, p. 18). A facsimile of a pedigree of the Fitzherbert family compiled by him for the privy council is given in Foley's ‘Records,’ ii. 198.

[Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1580–1604; Cal. Hatfield Manuscripts; Acts of the Privy Council, 1580–1589; Bibl. Anglo-Poetica, pp. 64, 212; Birch's Elizabeth, i. 160; Cal. of Chancery Proc. temp. Eliz. i. 320; Croke's Reports, temp. Eliz. pp. 72, 644; Hallam's Constitutional Hist. i. 139, 140; Hunter's Sheffield, p. 87; Jessopp's One Generation of a Norfolk House; Lodge's Illustrations, ii. 119–25, 143, 164, 428; More's Hist. Prov. Anglicanæ Soc. Jesu, p. 192; Nichols's Progr. Eliz. (1823), ii. 215, 219; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. vii. 207, 270, 331, 357, 417, 8th ser. x. 133, 198, xi. 51, xii. 434; Oldys's British Librarian, p. 280; Poulson's Beverlac, p. 390; Rymer's Fœdera, xvi. 201; Sadler State Papers, ii. 206; Strype's Works (general index); Turnbull's Memoirs of Southwell (1856), p. xxiv; Wright's Elizabeth, ii. 169, 244, Hearne's Langtoft, 1810, ii. 639.]  TOPHAM, EDWARD (1751–1820), journalist and play-writer, born in 1751, was the son of Francis Topham, LL.D. (d. 15 Oct. 1770), master of faculties and judge of the prerogative court at York. This official obtained from Archbishop Hutton the promise of the reversion for his son, but, in consequence of the action of Dean Fountayne, the pledge was withdrawn. There was open war between Topham and the dean, and the former was lampooned by Laurence Sterne in ‘A Political Romance, addressed to——, Esq., of York,’ printed (perhaps privately) in 1759, and reissued in 1769; it was frequently reprinted as ‘The History of a Warm Watch Coat’ (, York Press, pp. 256–60; see ).

The boy was educated at Eton under Dr. Foster, and remained there for eleven years. While at school he dabbled in poetry and was one of the leaders in the rebellion against Foster's rule. He was admitted at Trinity College, Cambridge, as pensioner on 22 April 1767, and as fellow-commoner on 23 Oct. 1769, but he left without taking a degree. Possibly he was the Topham mentioned as having drawn a caricature of the under-porter of Trinity (, Social Life at the Univ. p. 409).

On leaving the university, Topham travelled on the continent for eighteen months, and then, in company with his old schoolfellow Sir Paul Jodrell, spent six months in Scotland, publishing upon his return in 1776 a sprightly volume of ‘Letters from Edinburgh, 1774 and 1775, containing some Observations on the Diversions, Customs, Manners, and Laws of the Scotch Nation.’ He next came to London and purchased a commission in the first regiment of lifeguards. In 1777 he was ‘cornet of his majesty's second troop of horse-guards,’ and for about seven years he was the adjutant. He brought his regiment to a high state of efficiency, for which he received the thanks of the king and figured in print-shops as ‘the tip-top adjutant.’ In 1777 he published a tory ‘Address to Edmund Burke on Affairs in America.’

Topham soon became conspicuous in the fashionable world of London for his original style of dress and for the ease and elegance of his manners. His sartorial and other peculiarities were subsequently introduced to enliven the comedies of Frederic Reynolds [q. v.], who was Topham's guest in Suffolk in 1789 (cf., Memoirs, ii. 25–46). Meanwhile Topham associated with Wilkes, Horne Tooke, the elder Colman, and Sheridan; his talent as a writer of prologues and epilogues introduced him to the leading