Note 475 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY (continued 4)

It has been demonstrated by Mr. Sidney Young in his learned work, The Annals of the Barber Surgeons (1890), that this painting cannot represent the granting of the Charter by Henry VIII. This event occurred in 1512, when the King was but twenty-one years of age; Holbein makes him a man of fifty. Mr. Young believes Holbein’s subject to be the Union of the Barbers Company with the Guild of Surgeons, accomplished by Act of Parliament in 1540.