According to a story told by Walpole, Holbein once resided in a house on London Bridge. He says: “The father of Lord Treasurer Oxford passing over London Bridge, was caught in a shower, and stepping into a goldsmith’s shop for shelter, he found there a picture of Holbein (who had lived in that house) and his family. He offered the goldsmith 100_l._ for it, who consented to let him have it, but desired first to show it to some persons. Immediately after happened the fire of London, and the picture was destroyed.”[403] This story is apparently a mere legend, and there is no evidence to support it; nor is it very probable that an important painting by Holbein would have remained in the same small house for more than one hundred and twenty years. Dallaway, in his notes to Walpole, includes in a supplementary list of works by Holbein in England a small picture of Holbein, his wife, four boys, and a girl, at Mereworth Castle, Kent, which he suggests may be either a repetition or the original picture of the London Bridge story; but in the first place, Holbein never had a family of four sons, and, secondly, the picture bears no traces of Holbein’s manner. He quotes Gilpin’s description of it: “As a whole, it has no effect; but the heads are excellent. They are not painted in the common flat style of Holbein, but with a round, firm, glowing pencil, and yet exact imitation of nature is preserved—the boys are very innocent, beautiful characters.” If some such “family” picture existed in London at that time, it is much more likely to have been a copy or a replica of the genuine family group in the Basel Gallery. Footnote 403: Walpole, _Anecdotes_, ed. Wornum, i. p. 86, note. The favour with which Holbein was now regarded at court is shown by the frequency with which he received a year’s or half a year’s salary in advance, a mark of royal condescension which was most unusual. Thus under “September A^o xxxi” (1539) is the following entry: “Item paide by the Kingis highnesse commaundement certefied by my lorde privyseales lettres to Hans Holbenne, paynter, in the advauncement of his hole yeres wagis beforehande, aftre the rate of xxx _li._ by yere, which yeres advauncement is to be accompted from this present Michaelmas, and shall ende ultimo Septembris next commynge, the somme of xxx _li._”[404] Notwithstanding this payment in advance, it appears, as already pointed out,[405] from the four following quarterly entries in the accounts having reference to Holbein, from Michaelmas 1539 to Midsummer 1540, that he continued to receive his salary of £7, 10_s._ each quarter as usual.[406] If these entries are to be depended upon, he clearly received his money twice over, either by accident, owing to carelessness in the keeping of the King’s accounts, or of set purpose as a further reward for his services. Footnote 404: _C.L.P._, vol. xiv. pt. ii. p. 313, _The King’s Payments_, f. 90 _b_; and _Archæologia_, vol. xxxix. p. 9. Footnote 405: See p. 180.