The father coming home at night, and finding his wife in tears, soon guessed the dismal cause; and inquiring of the servants, they with dissembled grief informed him, that the child died in the morning soon after his departure. The man was much affected with the loss of his child, and thinking to prevent his wife’s grief by the sight of the body he had it removed to a kinsman’s house, and in a day or two interred it from thence, supposing it to be his son Judas.
By this time Providence had conducted Judas, alive and well, unto the coast of Iscariot, a kingdom in Palestine, where Pheophilus the king often used to recreate himself, in beholding the ships pass and repass at sea. It happened that the very day that Judas was cast on the coast, the king and his nobles came on that diversion, and as they were standing on the top of the rock, looking into the sea, the king espied a little boat floating upon the water, and thinking it to be a chest of some wrecked ship, he ordered a servant to put out a boat and fetch it; which being done, and brought to the king, he ordered it to be broken open; when to their great surprise, they found a lovely babe, who look’d up, and smiled in the king’s face. Then said the king to the child, welcome as my own child; and expressed much joy in being providentially sent to preserve the babe’s life, and taking it up in his arms, said if thou wert a child begat by me, I could not esteem or value thee more. Then he espied about its neck the aforementioned parchment, viz:
MY NAME IS JUDAS.
Well, said the king, as thy name is Judas, I will now double name thee, and then called him Judas Iscariot, because he found him near the coast of that name. He was then brought to court, treated as the king’s own child, and at a proper age educated well, and at last became a man of learning and genius and behaved himself so wisely, that the king made him his principal steward.
Judas being arrived at this rank, still coveted greater, and remembering the queen one day said, that if the prince, her son died, Judas should be her heir, he therefore set about contriving to kill him, accordingly he professed great love and friendship for him; and one day being walking together, Judas took occasion to quarrel with the prince, and maliciously slew him, thinking all would go well with him if he was dead.
Behold the serpent, which the king
Long nourished in his breast,
Grown warm, strikes forth his baneful sting,
And robb’d him of his rest.
Though none accused him of the murder, yet his conscience so stung him, that he soon quitted the kingdom, leaving all his pomp and finery behind him, and changing his name, took upon him the mean employ of a servant, wandering about from place to place, until at length he arrived at Joppa, the place of his nativity; here he soon got a place in a nobleman’s family, where he behaved so well as to gain the esteem of his lord and lady, and all that knew him. One day it happened that as his lady was walking abroad big with child, she longed for some fruit, which she saw in Judas’s father’s garden, bidding him go and buy her some. He took the money, but was resolved to steal the fruit; and going to the garden, broke down the fences, which as he was doing his father came out, and seized him for the robbery; and Judas to extricate himself from the hand of justice murdered his father upon the spot, and immediately escaped to Theba, a city about seventy-six leagues distance. Here he continued four years, in which time the noise of the murder being blown over, he returned back again, and got another place in a nobleman’s family, where he lived sometime, till his own mother accidentally seeing him fell in love with and married him.