Here were
choicest specimens of the then costly spices of Cathay, or the famous
falcons of Norway and Livonia, for which English sportsmen were willing
to pay fabulous prices.

As in other guilds, the government of this cosmopolitan beehive was that
of a despotic democracy. All the inmates of the precincts were subjected
to a rule little short of monastic in its strict discipline. The penalties
for any infringement, for drunkenness or dicing or even for an abusive
epithet, were very severe. The civic duties of the corporation, too,
were sharply defined. In case of war every member had his appointed post
in the defence of London. Every "master" had to keep the prescribed
accoutrements and arms ready for immediate use, and the repairs and
maintenance of the Bishop's Gate were at the sole cost of the Steelyard.

No chapel was erected within its enclosure, the Guild preferring to be
incorporated with the adjoining parish of Allhallows. Whether or not
there is any truth at the bottom of the ancient tradition that this
church had been originally founded by Germans, the Guild maintained its
own altar in it in Holbein's time, where Masses were said on its own
special days and festivals. So far are the facts from the common
supposition that the doctrines of Luther would find natural favour in
such a community, that the latter only gradually came into the "Church
of England" by the same slow processes which transformed the whole
parish around it. And when More, who was anything but _Utopian_ himself
in the practice of tolerating "heresy" during his chancellorship, headed
a domiciliary visit in search of Lutheran writings, he could find
nothing but orthodox German Prayer-books and the Scriptures, whose use
among laymen he always strenuously advocated; while every member of the
community was able to make honest and hearty oath at St. Paul's Cross
that no heretic or heretical doctrine would be tolerated amongst them.

Here, then, in this staunch citadel of his own faith, Holbein naturally
found a new circle of friends among whom it must have been strangely
easy to fancy himself back in the Fischmarkt of his young years, with
Froben and Erasmus and Amerbach and Meyer zum Hasen.

The curtain rings up on his work for the Steelyard,--work which covered
many years and more fine paintings than could even be enumerated
here--with a superlative exhibition of all his powers. The oil portrait
of Georg Gyze, or George Gisze, as it is often