Descendants of Judas Iscariot.—In Southey's Omniana is the following:
"It was believed in Pier della Valle's time that the descendants of Judas still existed at Corfu, though the persons who suffered this imputation stoutly denied the truth of the genealogy."
Is anything farther to be met with on this curious subject?
G. Creed.
Parish Clerks and Politics.—In Twenty-six Psalms of Thanksgiving and Praise, Love and Glory, for the use of a Parish Church (Exon., And. Brice, 1725), the rector (who compiled it), among other reasons for omitting all the imprecatory Psalms, says,—
"Lest a parish clerk, or any other, should be whetting his spleen, or obliging his spite, when he should be entertaining his devotion."
That such practices were indulged in, we have the farther evidence of Bramston the satirist:
"Not long since parish clerks, with saucy airs,
Apply'd King David's Psalms to state-affairs."[[3]]
Can any readers of "N. & Q." point out examples of such misapplication?