Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Young Bess > Status Update

‘He left command that he should be buried at Windsor beside the body of Jane Seymour, his third wife, the only one who had given him a son. And that his soul was to be prayed for, and masses said for it, to release it the sooner from Purgatory. He had abolished Purgatory –he had intended to abolish the Mass –but no matter, one might as well be on the safe side.‘

‘And behind all Bess’s anxiety was the terrifying fact that the Queen’s friend, Lady Anne Askew, had been arrested for denouncing the Mass, and had been tortured in the Tower more than once. Was it an attempt to make her implicate the Queen? Whatever happened, Catherine must not plead the cause of her friend now –let her be tortured, racked, burnt’