Okay, one more rant about that god-awful book and then I’m done I swear.
So one of the things Meyer brings up as a sort of “gotcha” point about how supposedly vile Elizabeth was is her relationship to and employment of Richard Topcliffe, one of the most notorious interrogators and torturers in Elizabeth’s service. First let me go on the record by saying that Topcliffe was absolutely vile and the methods he used to extract information from his prisoners were nothing short of evil and Elizabeth’s protection of and use of Topcliffe is indeed a stain on her morality. That’s not what I’m disputing however Meyer presents false evidence and twists words in order to make it seem as though Elizazbeth relished what Topcliffe was doing.
After discussing Topcliffe’s heinous acts on their own, Meyer claims two main things: that Elizabeth referred to Catholics as “lewde Popishe beasts” to him and that he and Elizabeth had a close relationship in which “[Topcliffe] himself was so familiar with Her Majesty that he had very secret dealings with her.”
Literally all I had to do was pick up a different (more academic) book and do a bit of Googling to prove both of these wrong. Firstly, Elizabeth did not refer to Catholics as “lewde Popish beasts” in this instance - Topcliffe himself did. He does so in a letter to the Early of Shrewsbury in August of 1578.
(Taken from John Nichols's The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth I: A New Edition of the Early Modern Sources, Vol. 2: 1572–1578, pg 774)
Elizabeth merely relayed to him that there were suspected Catholics at Buxton, the wording is his own. We must also keep in mind the context of the situation. This was written eight years after Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth thereby forcing her hand and causing her to dramatically increase the persecution of Catholics in England. Something that may have been considered a necessary evil on her part given the fact that before this she strove not to overly-prosecute based on religious views. “Popish” was a common derogatory term for Catholics in Elizabethan England, one used by Elizabeth herself, but the sheer vitriolic hatred of the above quote does not fall in line with what we know of Elizabeth’s religious sensibilities. Keep in mind that not only were Catholics not fond of her but neither were hard-line Protestants who suspected her of harbouring Catholic tendencies. And they weren’t exactly wrong either, since she displayed: “distaste for clerical marriage, old-fashioned liturgical preferences, and stubborn refusal to countenance attempts to reconstruct English Protestantism in the image of Calvin’s Geneva.” Not to mention her fight to keep Evensong in the English service.
So Meyer misattributes a quote to Elizabeth which is frustrating enough but then comes the insinuation that Elizabeth always had Topcliffe in her pocket. I picked up Carole Levin’s “The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power” and lo and behold I found the second quote about Elizabeth’s “secret dealings” with Topcliffe and it’s even more damning to his argument for the simple reason that it’s completely false.
Thomas Portmort, a seminary priest who was hunted by Topcliffe said those words, claiming that Topcliffe had intimate knowledge of the Queen that, “he many tymes putteth his hands betweene her brestes and pappes ... and had his handes above her knees.” Topcliffe was outraged and denied saying any of this. Portmort refused to recant his story to his death but what has to be kept in mind was that Portmort naturally hated Topcliffe and probably wasn’t feeling too cozy towards Elizabeth either. There is no evidence at all to back up his story and Levin herself says, “We will never know who invented his story - Topcliffe or Portmort - though it is undeniably an invented story, and it was taken for one at the time. John Hungerford Pollen suggests that ‘Portmort did not allege Topcliffe’s words were true. The charge was that he did utter them.’”
So Meyer not only misattributes quotes but he uses a story that even in the 16th century was accepted as false. And this he did on only two pages. Imagine the drivel he might come up with in the hundreds of others in his book. He bends backwards to portray Elizabeth as an evil, vain, selfish crone of a woman and that’s not revisionism - that’s just plain misogyny.
So when people ask me why I want to study Tudor history when its already so oversaturated with content my answer is always yes, it is oversaturated. But it’s often oversaturated with complete shit, and that’s what bothers me.
