Things had changed in London also, and gravely, Holbein found, since he had quitted Sir Thomas More's home at Chelsea with the sketch for Erasmus, in the summer of 1528. He had barely settled himself, in the City this time, before the struggle between Henry VIII. and the English Clergy ended in that Convocation when the latter made its formal "Submission." And in the same month that this took place, Sir Henry Guildford died. Then the three great Acts of Parliament, which swept away the crying abuses of "Benefit of Clergy," resurrected the "dead" lands (so called because perpetually _aliened in mortmain_) by restoring them to the national circulation of the Sovereign-Will, and turned the rich stream of Annates or "First-Fruits" of the bishoprics from the Pope's coffers to the King's,--were passed in this year. This legislation was followed by the solemn protest and then the death of Archbishop Warham. So that now of that great and close quartet of friends,--Colet, Warham, More, and Erasmus,--there were two on either shore of the last crossing. And More could already see the dark river ahead. His eye marked the consequences of the Acts as keenly as his aged friend Warham had discerned them on his death-bed; and shortly after the "Submission," More resigned his great office as Chancellor. These seem matters too high to twist the threads of a poor painter's life. But in reality Holbein's career was shaped, from many a year back, by such events as rarely touch the humble individual directly. All his friends and all his patrons in this country were carried far out of reach by 1532; and he must sink or swim, as they in darker waters, according to his own powers. That under such unexpected ill-fortune he did not immediately sink was due to two things--the greatness of his powers, and the circumstance that a trading-company of Continentals, chiefly German, was seated in London with immense wealth and immense influence at its disposal, and that they were men who knew how to appreciate Holbein at his worth.