On 12 March, the Earl of Essex, Henry Bouchier, falls from his horse, breaks his neck, and dies on the spot. ‘God forgive me,’ Charles Brandon says. ‘On the king’s wedding day I made a jest about him, that he was not long for this world.’ ‘My lord,’ he says, ‘it is nowise your doing.’ Where will old Essex go? Straight to Judgement? Or will he lie quiet in his grave till the Last Day? Will he work off his sins in Purgatory for half a million years, or is he already at his destination – at the top of the Stairway to Heaven, or in a pit of the Inferno reserved for earls?
