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HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

A picture, said to have been painted by Hans Holbein, and now preservedin-Windsor Castle, affords'us, if we admit its authenticity, a second link in thechain. There are many, however, who refuse to allow the ship there represented,which is supposed to have been built by king Henry the Eighth, in the third yearof his reign, to have been of so remote a construction. They chuse rather,and we conceive very strangely, to transfer it to the eighth year of thereign of king James the First, asserting it to have been the Prince Royal,of sixty-four guns, launched about that time, under the direction of Mr,Phineas Pett. The vessel has been thus described :—

“ In Windsor Castle is an ancient picture of a ship named the Regent, orSovereign of England, which was burnt in an engagement with the French in] 512. King Henry, in 1520 *, ordered a great ship to be built, such a one ashad never been seen in England, named Henry Grace de Dieu, or the GreatHarry; an original drawing of which is preserved in the library of MagdalenCollege, Cambridge, carrying eighty guns, presented to the king in 1546, andburnt in the first year of Mary.”

“ By Allen there is an engraving of a ship, called the Great Harry, pub-lished in 1756, which diffbrS widely from the above: the prow and roundtowers vary the form essentially ; many figures on the decks of men ; thedecorations very different, and the supporters on the arms are a lion and uni-corn ; whereas the unicorn was not introduced as a supporter earlier than Jamesthe First, which renders it probable, that this picture was of a date subsequent toHenry the Eighth. Query , Was not the ship by Allen that built in James theFirst’s reign, (a description of which is given in Stowe’s Chronicle) in 1610, thebuilder Phineas Pett, carrying sixty-four pieces of great ordnance, and of theburthen of fourteen hundred tons, being the greatest ever built in England -f-?”

This account, and the extracts which are interwoven with it, are, in somepoints, incorrect, and the general objections inconclusive; notwithstandingmany very learned and ingenious men, whose judgment must be held in thehighest estimation, have started, and with much energy supported, a similaropinion. If the picture in question really is the performance of Hans Hol-bein, which very few doubt, it must, of necessity, be the representation, either

* This is evidently a mistake, the Henry Grace a Dieu having been finished in 1515.

+ The matter of this, and the preceding paragraph, have been obligingly communicated by Mr. Pett,of Tovill, near Maidstone, the present representative of the family.

real