English: The sitter is wearing a black velvet cap and gown; an embroidered shirt collar with strings attached is showing at the neck. The portrait is inscribed with the year and his age in gold lettering at head height – ANNO DÕ 1539 ETATIS SVÆ 30 – that is, he was thirty years of age in 1539 or early 1540.
In 1791 Sylvester Harding made a drawing of a painting of the same individual: ‘Cromwell’, attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger, then in the possession of Sir William Burrell, second baronet (1732–1796). The painting, which may have previously been in the collection of Thomas Barrett of Lee Priory, in Kent, was destroyed by a fire at Knepp Castle, Sussex, in 1904. The young man is clearly not Thomas Cromwell or his son, Gregory (c.1520–1551), but he is about the right age to be his nephew, Richard Cromwell alias Williams (c.1510–1544).