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.

"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.

Will this desperate venture cost him his family, his freedom, his livelihood - even his life?

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.