6 LIFE OF HOLBEIN. tertainment, and hung up all Holbein's pieces, disposed in the best order, and in the best light, in the great hall of his house. The king, upon his first entrance, was so charmed with the sight of them, that he asked, ' Whether such an artist were now alive, and to be had for money ?" on which Sir Thomas presented Holbein to the king, who immediately took him into his service, with a salary of 200 florins, and brought him into great esteem with the nobility of the kingdom. The king from time to time manifested the great value he had for him; and upon the death of Queen Jane, his third wife, sent him into Flanders, to draw the picture of the Duchess Dowager of Milan, widow of Francis Sforza, whom the Emperor Charles V. had recommended to him for a fourth wife; but the king's defection from the See of Rome happening about that time, he rather chose to match with a protes-tant princess. Cromwell, then his prime minister (for Sir Thomas More had been removed, and beheaded), proposed Anne of