Some years before the painter's death he took Philip Holbein to Paris, and there apprenticed him to the eminent goldsmith, Jerome David, with whom he remained until a couple of years after Holbein's death. Later, he somehow drifted to Lisbon, where he followed his trade until he settled in the old home of his grandfather and great-grandfather, Augsburg. In 1611 his son, Philip Holbein, junior, then "Imperial Court Jeweller" at Augsburg, petitioned the Emperor Matthias for letters patent to "confirm" his right to certain noble arms. The claims put forward in this document are utterly at variance with the received belief in Holbein's humble Augsburg origin. Yet the most expert investigators who have carefully studied this subject agree in thinking that this grandson based the genealogical tree on mythical foundations, and therefore planted it remote from Augsburg itself. But be this as it may--and it seems hard to reconcile such discrepancies within a century of the time when both Hans Holbein the Elder and his son were well-known citizens of Augsburg,--the application was successful. Mechel says that this Philip, who claims descent from the renowned "painter of Basel," lived in Vienna during his later years; and that a descendant of his again got their patent "confirmed" in 1756, with the right to carry the surname of _Holbeinsberg_; also that this latter descendant was made a Knight of the Empire in 1787, as the noble _von Holbeinsberg_. So much for the eldest branch, that of Philip Holbein. The younger boy, Jacob, was a goldsmith in London after Holbein's death. The evidence seems to show that he was never here previous to that event,--which of itself may have first occasioned his coming, though hardly at the time, as Jacob was not more than thirteen at his father's death. A document in existence proves that he also died in London, about 1552, and apparently unmarried; at which time his elder brother, Philip, was still in Lisbon. Katharina, the elder daughter, the baby of the Basel painting, seems to have left no descendants. She married a butcher of Basel and died in 1590. And in the same year, very likely from one of the frequent epidemics so fatal to Basel, died Kuenegoldt, Elsbeth's youngest child. The Merian family of Frankfurt-am-Main claims an hereditary right to the artistic gifts of its famous copper-engraver, Mathew Merian, as descendants of Holbein through this daughter Kuenegoldt, who, when she died, was the wife of Andreas Syff, a miller, of Basel. According to the greatest authority on this subject, Eduard His, to whose exhaustive researches we owe almost all that is known of Holbein's family, the Merian claims have not, so far, been proved by actual archives; but he is of opinion that there is considerable circumstantial evidence to support their claim to be lineal descendants of Holbein through the female line.