Black Harry

<p>William Dickenson man of business to the earl of Shrewsbury knows that raising the rents on farmholds will ease his master's cash-flow problem. But Lord Shrewsbury imposes such huge increases on one manor Glossopdale in the Derbyshire Peak District that none of the tenants can pay. </p><p>Black Harry Botham of Storth Farm in the Glossopdale hamlet of Simmondley knows the courts won't oppose those rent increases; Lord Shrewsbury is too powerful. So accompanied by a few followers he walks to London determined to complain to the Queen's Privy Council.</p><p>Will this desperate venture cost him his family his freedom his livelihood - even his life? </p><p>Told partly by Tom Spiderlegs Booth Harry's brother-in-law and close friend and partly from William Dickenson's perspective Black Harry recounts one of the most remarkable David and Goliath episodes in Elizabethan England.</p>