erchant and magistrate of the
fair city. Probably the archbishop was a brother of this James Adamson, and
son of Patrick Adamson, who was Dean of the Guild when John Knox preached
his famous sermon at St. John's. Mariota, a daughter of the archbishop, is
said by Burke to have married Sir Michael {479} Balfour, Bart., of Nortland
Castle Orkney. Another daughter would appear to have become the wife of
Thomas Wilson, or Volusenus, as he calls himself, the editor of his
father-in-law's poems and other publications.

E. H. A.

_Cursitor Barons of the Exchequer._--Will you allow me to repeat a question
which you inserted in Vol. v., p. 346., as to a list of these officers, and
any account of their origin and history? Surely some of your
correspondents, devoted to legal antiquities, can give note a clue to the
labyrinth which Madox has not ventured to enter. The office still
exists--with peculiar duties which are still performed--and we know that it
is an ancient one; all sufficient grounds for inquiry, which I trust will
meet with some response.

EDWARD FOSS.

_Syriac Scriptures._--I am very anxious to know what editions of the
Scriptures in Syriac (the _Peshito_) were published between Leusden and
Schaaf's New Testament, and the entire Bible in 1816 by the Bible Society.

B. H. C.

* * * * *

Replies.

PSALMANAZAR.

(Vol. vii., pp. 206. 435.)

Having long felt a great respect for this person, and a great interest in
all that concerns his history, I am induced to mention the grounds on which
I have been led to doubt whether the letter in the _Gentleman's Magazine_,
to which MR. CROSSLEY refers, is worthy of credit. When I first saw it, I
considered it as so valuable an addition to the information which I had
collected on the subject, that I was anxious to know who was the writer. It
had no signature; but the date, "Sherdington, June, 1704," which was
retained, gave me a clue which, by means not worth detailing, led me to the
knowledge that what thus appeared in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for
February, 1765, had issued from "Curll's chaste press" more than thirty
years before, in the form of a letter from the person now known in literary
history as "Curll's Corinna," but by her cotemporaries (see the index of
Mr. Cunningham's excellent _Handbook of London_) as Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas,
sometime of Dyot Street, St. Giles's, and afterwards of a locality not
precisely ascertained, but wi