elf, in the
City this time, before the struggle between Henry VIII. and the English
Clergy ended in that Convocation when the latter made its formal
"Submission." And in the same month that this took place, Sir Henry
Guildford died. Then the three great Acts of Parliament, which swept
away the crying abuses of "Benefit of Clergy," resurrected the "dead"
lands (so called because perpetually _aliened in mortmain_) by restoring
them to the national circulation of the Sovereign-Will, and turned the
rich stream of Annates or "First-Fruits" of the bishoprics from the
Pope's coffers to the King's,--were passed in this year.

This legislation was followed by the solemn protest and then the death
of Archbishop Warham. So that now of that great and close quartet of
friends,--Colet, Warham, More, and Erasmus,--there were two on either
shore of the last crossing. And More could already see the dark river
ahead. His eye marked the consequences of the Acts as keenly as his aged
friend Warham had discerned them on his death-bed; and shortly after the
"Submission," More resigned his great office as Chancellor.

These seem matters too high to twist the threads of a poor painter's
life. But in reality Holbein's career was shaped, from many a year back,
by such events as rarely touch the humble individual directly. All his
friends and all his patrons in this country were carried far out of
reach by 1532; and he must sink or swim, as they in darker waters,
according to his own powers. That under such unexpected ill-fortune he
did not immediately sink was due to two things--the greatness of his
powers, and the circumstance that a trading-company of Continentals,
chiefly German, was seated in London with immense wealth and immense
influence at its disposal, and that they were men who knew how to
appreciate Holbein at his worth.

The roots of the Steelyard (_Stahlhof_), or "Stilyard," as it is often
called in early dramatists, go far back to the legendary centuries of
English history. From before the time of Alfred the Great, traders from
Germany had clustered together on the bank of the Thames, close to where
Cannon Street Station now stands. Amalgamation with the Hanseatic
League, and the necessities and gratitude of more than one king of
England--but especially of Edward IV.--had made of the Steelyard a
company such as only the East India Company of later centuries may
be compared to. With the world's new geography and new commercial
co