John Norris, or Noryce—the name was spelt in various other ways—was one of the minor officials of Henry VIII’s court, filling the part of gentleman usher, which he afterwards held under Edward VI and Queen Mary, dying in 1564 as chief usher of the Privy Chamber to the latter queen. Among other offices which he obtained was that of Controller of Windsor Castle. He was son and heir of Sir Edward Norris of Bray and Yattendon in Berkshire, and elder brother of that ill-fated Henry Norris, one of Henry’s close companions, who was involved in the tragic fate of Anne Boleyn. The inscription shows that at some time, probably during Holbein’s life, John Norris owned this portrait of Erasmus, and that he presented it to a friend named Edward Banister. According to Sir Sidney Colvin’s researches, this Banister was also employed about the Court. In 1526 he appears as a gentleman usher out of wages for the county of Hants, and in 1539 he was one of the representatives of the same county appointed to receive Anne of Cleves at Calais and escort her to England. The inscription on the picture was probably written by Banister himself. This portrait may have been the one in the possession of John, Lord Lumley, son-in-law of Henry Fitzalan, twelfth and last Earl of Arundel of that creation. In the Lumley inventory of 1590 it is described as “Of Erasmus of Roterdame, drawne by Haunce Holbyn.” Among his other portraits by Holbein, Lord Lumley also possessed the full-length of the Duchess of Milan, and it is most probable that the label with the inscription was added to both portraits when in his collection. The “Erasmus” was afterwards in the famous collection of Thomas Howard, the great Earl of Arundel, from which it passed by bequest of Alathea, Countess of Arundel, to her grandson, Charles Howard, into that of the Greystoke branch of the Howard family, where it remained, at their seat in Cumberland, until its recent purchase by Mr. Morgan. The Earl of Arundel possessed two portraits of Erasmus by Holbein,[408] the second being the Longford Castle picture. While in this collection the Greystoke version was engraved by Lucas Vorsterman, a very excellent print, undated, in which the figure is in reverse of the picture.[409] It was engraved again, when in the same collection, by Andreas Stock, the plate being dated from the Hague, 1628. In this engraving the position is the same as in the portrait, which suggests that Stock merely copied from Vorsterman, and not from the picture itself. In the inscription at the foot of Stock’s engraving it is stated that the portrait from which it was taken was the one which Erasmus himself told Sir Thomas More he very greatly preferred to the one of him by Albrecht Dürer; but the statement appears to have no real foundation in fact. Whether the portrait was sent to England by Erasmus in charge of Holbein when he returned to England in 1532, as a present to some friend or