On July 12th, 1543, the "next" year as it then began, the King married Catherine Parr. She had been twice widowed and was about to marry Sir Thomas Seymour when the King interfered, and she became his wife instead; though one can well credit the story that she tremblingly told him, "It were better to be his mistress." She was a good woman, a generous stepmother, and a good wife. But there is plenty of probability for the assertion that her own death had been debated with the King when her wit delayed it, and his death set her free to marry at last the man from whom the King had snatched her.

It was formerly believed, as has been said, that Holbein had painted her miniature—the one at Windsor, now declared to be the portrait of Catherine Howard. About this time he must have painted the great portrait of which mention has been made. This is the oil portrait of Dr. Chamber, the King's physician, now in the Vienna Gallery ([Plate 38]). The sitter was, as the inscription shows, eighty-eight years old; and the strong, stern face is full of that "inward" look which comes to the faces of men whose meat and drink has been a lifetime of heavy responsibilities. He had been associated with the Charter of the College of Physicians in 1518, and was also instrumental in that of the Guild of "Barbers and Surgeons," in 1541. And it was probably through him and Dr. Butts, another physician to the King whom Holbein had painted and who was likewise a Master of the new Guild, that he undertook to paint a large work for their hall—Henry VIII. granting their Charter to the Master-Surgeons kneeling before him.

PLATE 38.
DR. CHAMBER
Oils. Vienna Gallery
Click to [ENLARGE]

This work Holbein did not live to finish; and it is to-day exceedingly doubtful as to how much of the smoke-blackened painting is by him. The very drawing has a woodenness foreign to his compositions, and much of the painting is by an evidently inferior hand. But good judges hold some of the heads to be undoubtedly his work.

However this may be, with the autumn of 1543 Holbein's life came to a sudden close. Van Mander, wrong as to the date by eleven years which have fathered a host of spurious Holbeins on the Histories of Art, is apparently right as to the cause of death—"the Plague." By the great discovery of Hans Holbein's Will, found by Mr. Black in 1861 among the archives of St. Paul's Cathedral, it is proved that the painter made his Will on October 7th, and must have died between this and November 29th, 1543, when administration was granted to one of his executors (the other would seem to have perished, meanwhile, from the same epidemic). This surviving executor was an old friend of the artist, whose portrait, in the Windsor Gallery, he had painted eleven years before—Hans of Antwerp, a master-goldsmith of the Steelyard.

The Will bears about it evident signs of having been made in great haste and mental disturbance. But it accomplished all that Holbein probably had at heart; that is, the ensuring that whatsoever moneys could be collected from his accounts, or by the sale of "all my goodes and also my horse," should first be applied to clear a couple of specified debts, and the rest be managed for the sole benefit of "my two chylder which be at nurse." From the very fact that nothing as to the identity or whereabouts of these babies is mentioned, it is clear that Holbein relied on the verbal instructions which he had given to his trusted friends and to their complete understanding of all the circumstances as well as of his wishes. He was only concerned, apparently, that such small means as could thus be saved for them should not be permitted to pass to his legal heirs.

No other heirs are mentioned; no other legacy is made. From the Will alone one who did not know otherwise would suppose that he had no other family or relatives in existence. The Plague left no man in its neighbourhood much leisure for explanations. Stowe records that the one of that autumn was such "a great death" that the Law Courts had to be transferred to St. Albans. But two things seem to speak in this curt document. First, that by the transference of his uncle Sigmund's little fortune to Franz Schmidt (as trustee for Elsbeth and the children of her marriage with Holbein), which the archives prove took place three years earlier, and by his other arrangements for his family at Basel and for Philip at Paris, Holbein held himself free of any further responsibility for their support, and, indeed, determined that they should not obtain possession of the residue in London.

Secondly, that if the mother of his two illegitimate children had lived with him in London as his wife, she must have just died—perhaps in childbed, perhaps of the Plague. She is not in any way referred to. And there is something in the very signs of confusion and distress throughout the wording of the Will which seems to exhale a far-away anguish—sudden parting, sad apprehensions, keenest anxiety for "my two chylder which be at nurse." There comes before the eye a picture of the five grave men—Holbein, his two executors, the one a goldsmith, the other an armourer, and his two witnesses, a "merchaunte" and a "paynter"—hurrying along the plague-infected streets to get this document legalised as some protection for two motherless babies, in the event of their father's death. No man knew whose turn would come within the hour.

And by November 29th Holbein's had come, and one executor's also, apparently. The Latin record of administration on this date is that it has been consigned to John Anwarpe (Johann or Hans of Antwerp), and accepted by him in accordance with "the last will of John, alias Hans Holbein, recently deceased in the parish of Saint Andrew Undershaft."

It would seem probable, then, that the painter was buried in this church rather than in the closely adjoining church of Saint Catharine-Cree to which tradition assigned his body. But the horrors of such an epidemic as that in which the painter was swept suddenly away make it easy to understand how even such a man as he had now become could die unnoticed and be buried in an unrecorded grave. When the Earl of Arundel, a few years later, sought to learn where he might set up a monument to one he so greatly admired, there was only this vague and uncorroborated rumour that the painter was buried in Saint Catharine-Cree. And so no monument was built to mark the spot where Holbein's "measure of sliding sand" had been spilled at last.