been placed under the year 1538 by the editor of the _Calendars of Letters and Papers_ from such internal evidence in it as it is possible to decipher; but it is so badly mutilated that it is impossible to make much sense of the greater part of it. It contains news from abroad, and mentions Burgratus, vice-chancellor of the Duke of Saxony; and Burgratus was certainly in London in the summer of 1538, with other envoys from the German Protestant princes. These envoys, however, paid more than one visit to England. As, therefore, the letter contains no evidence absolutely conclusive of the date 1538, it may, perhaps, be permitted to hold the opinion that it was written in some other year, and that, by itself, it is not sufficient to negative the strong proofs brought forward to show that Holbein was the painter who made this particular journey into France. Nor was this the only occasion on which Spalatinus used Kratzer as the medium for sending copies of his writings to Cromwell. On February 5, 1539, Cromwell wrote to the King, enclosing “a book brought this morning by Nic. Cratzer, astronomer, which Geo. Spalatinus, some time schoolmaster to the duke of Saxony, desired him to deliver to the King, on ‘The Solace and Consolation of Princes.’”[320] Footnote 319: _C.L.P._, vol. xiii. pt. ii. 179. Footnote 320: _C.L.P._, vol. xiv. pt. i. 227. _St. P._, i. 592. [Sidenote: THE DATE OF HOBY’S INSTRUCTIONS] One other point in connection with this subject must be mentioned before leaving it. Hoby’s instructions for visiting the courts of the Duchess of Guise and the Duke of Lorraine are not dated. The editor of the _Calendars_ has entered them under February 1538, together with the very similar instructions for the visit to the Duchess of Milan, which are also undated, placing both under the one heading, “Philip Hoby’s Missions.” For the latter instructions, which he puts second, February is, of course, the correct date, but the former should be under August, as the preceding pages prove. Dr. Gairdner was misled, in the first place, by the fact that in February Hoby received payment from the royal purse for a journey to France, and, in the second, through his misreading of the heading to the Brussels instructions, as explained in the last chapter.[321] By the insertion of two unnecessary words,[322] the last-named instructions are made to read as though it was Cromwell’s intention that Hoby, on this particular journey, should go first of all to the Duchess of Lorraine, and then to the Duchess of Milan. He concludes from this, in his preface to vol. xiii. pt. i. of the _Calendars of Letters and Papers_, that Hoby went to France in February for the purpose of obtaining the portraits of Marie of Guise and her sister Louise in a single picture, and immediately upon his return set out for Brussels to get one of the Duchess of Milan. There is no need to quote the whole of his argument, as it is based upon a misapprehension,