There is in the folklore of Shropshire and Herefordshire a figure known as Wild Eric who, with his pack of flying hounds (the Seven Whistlers) reins wild elemental terror on the woodlands in those parts. Windsor Castle is Ainsworth's tale of Herne the Hunter, and the hunter is an admixture of Wild Eric and a sort of Windsor Mephistopheles: in a very real way, this is a tale of the devil's special haunting of Henry VIII and all of those who so famously attended him.