Note 137 — SCENE VI.

Dyce quotes from Sir John Mandeville:— "And fast by is zit the tree of Eldre that Judas henge him self upon for despeyt that he hadde when he solde and betrayed our Lorde."—Voiage and Travell, &c., p. 112, ed. 1725. "That Judas hanged himself," says Sir Thomas Browne, "much more that he perished thereby, we shall not raise a doubt. Although Jansenius, discoursing the point, produceth the testimony of Theophylact and Euthymius that he died not by the gallows but under a cart-wheel; and Baronius also delivereth, this was the opinion of the Greeks and derived as high as Papias one of the disciples of John. Although, also, how hardly the expression of Matthew is reconcileable unto that of Peter, and that he plainly hanged himself, with that, that falling headlong he burst asunder in the midst—with many other the learned Grotius plainly doth acknowledge."—Vulgar Errors, vii. 11.