As far as can be ascertained, there is not the slightest truth in this legend. Nothing is known as to the identity of Heymans, but Lord William Benting was evidently William Bentinck (1704-1774), of Rhoon and Pendrecht in Holland, and Terrington St. Clements, Norfolk, third son of Hans William Bentinck, first Earl of Portland, and a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. Douce, who gave undeserved authority to this story, made no attempt to trace the history of the manuscript “addresses” which accompanied the etchings, and though he saw them, does not say to whom they then belonged, or even in what language they were written. They may be safely set down as forgeries, as far as any wall-paintings of the “Dance of Death” by Holbein are concerned. Piccard, whoever he may have been, is the sole authority for the existence of these mythical works, which are not mentioned by Van Mander or Sandrart, or by any of the foreign travellers who visited this country in their descriptions of Whitehall, though the wall-painting of Henry VIII with his wife and parents in the same palace is more than once spoken of in such records in terms of high praise. Both Pepys and Evelyn are equally silent on the subject, though the latter mentions the “Dance of Death” woodcuts, and ascribes them to Holbein by name. “We have seen,” he says, “some few things cut in wood by the incomparable Hans Holbein the Dane, but they are rare and exceedingly difficult to come by; as his _Licentiousnesse of the Friers and Nuns_; _Erasmus_; _Moriae Encomium_; _the Trial and Crucifixion of Christ_; _The Daunce Macchabree_; the _Mortis Imago_, which he painted in great in the Church at Basil, and afterwards graved with no lesse art.”[401] What he says is by no means free from mistakes, but as, in speaking of a visit paid to Whitehall in 1656, he describes the condition of the large wall-painting of the two kings Henry VII and Henry VIII, and their consorts, it is not probable that he would have failed to mention any other important wall-paintings in the palace had they existed. Douce thought he had discovered a corroboration of Piccard’s story in an entry in Van der Doort’s catalogue of Charles I’s collection, which runs: “A little piece, where Death with a green garland about his head, stretching both his arms to apprehend a Pilate in the habit of one of the spiritual Prince-Electors of Germany. Copied by Isaac Oliver from Holbein”; but this, no doubt, was painted from the woodcut of the Elector in the Lyon “Dance of Death,” and not from a large wall-painting. Footnote 401: Evelyn, _Sculptura_, ed. 1769, p. 69.