Which often, since my here-remain in England,
I have seen him do. How he solicits Heaven,
Himself best knows: but strangely visited people,
All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despair of surgery, he cures;
Hanging golden stamp about their necks,
Put on with holy prayers; and 'tis spoken,
To the succeeding royalty he leaves
The healing benediction.
The monarchs of France claimed to exercise the same power, and there was once a great contest between the writers of the two countries as to the comparative powers of their respective sovereigns in the cure of disease, as earnest, perhaps, as the controversies of the present day about armies and navies.
Philip of Valeria is reported to have cured fourteen hundred persons. Gernell, the traveller, describes a ceremonial in which Louis XIV. touched sixteen hundred persons afflicted with scrofula on Easter Sunday, saying "Le Roi te touche, Dieu te guérisse." The French kings kept up the practice until 1770, when republican principles were beginning to interfere with many of the prerogatives of royalty.
King Edward the Confessor, we are informed in Collier's "Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain," was the first king of England who exercised this extraordinary power, and from him it has descended upon all his successors. "To dispute the matter of fact," says this grave historian, "is to go to the excesses of scepticism, to deny our senses, and be incredulous even to ridiculousness." The authority of Sir John Fortescue, Lord Chief Justice under Henry VI., is no less explicit. "The kings of England," he assures us, "at the time of unction, received such a divine power, that, by the touch of their hands, they can cleanse and cure those, who are otherwise considered incurable, of a certain disease, commonly called the king's evil."
The ceremony of touching, as described in Shakespeare, was accompanied by the gift of a small coin of gold, which was worn as a medal by the patient, and during some reigns, when the monarch was popular, or faith active, or scrofula prevalent, these coins amounted to 3000l. a-year. Henry VII.—to give the ceremony a greater solemnity—ordered a form of religious service to accompany it.
Queen Elizabeth is said to have been averse to the custom, as either superstitious or disgusting; but she practised it notwithstanding, and with great success. She was, however, more select than had been the practice of former sovereigns, either to save herself trouble, or expense to the treasury; for she required that every one who presented himself to be touched should bring a certificate from the Court surgeons that the disease was scrofula, and that it was incurable by the ordinary means; and one of Her Majesty's surgeons, William Clowes, testifies that "a mighty number of Her Majestie's subjects were daily cured and healed, which otherwise would have most miserably perished."
The historians of the reign of Charles I. do not neglect to inform us that he excelled all his predecessors in this divine gift; and so great were the numbers who came to be cured, that out of regard to economy, he used silver medals instead of gold; and when these failed, sometimes cured by mere praying, without even the laying on of hands. Among the State Papers of this reign, there is a proclamation "for the better ordering of those who repayre to the Court for their cure of the called the king's evill." Such proclamations were issued from time to time, during all those dark ages, of Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon, and were ordered to be posted up in every market town in the kingdom.
During the Protectorate of Cromwell—when there was no king to cure it—scrofula appears to have greatly increase, for no English monarch was ever called upon to touch so many as Charles II. after the restoration. After all the care of the surgeons to see that none but the really scrofulous, and those beyond their own power to cure, approached him, the numbers were almost incredible. A register was kept at Whitehall; and though one day in a week was appointed and the number limited, it is down in the record that the Merry Monarch in twenty years touched and prayed over more than 92,000 persons.
In Evelyn's Diary, March 28, 1684, a sad accident is recorded, as resulting from the crowds who to be cured, six or seven being crushed to death "by pressing at the chirurgeon's doore for tickets." At this time as 600 were touched in a day. Some were immediately relieved, others gradually, and few are reported as not benefited. The surgeon, whose scientific incredulity appears to have yielded only to the stubborn facts, confessed himself "nonplust," and asserted that "more souls have been healed by His Majestie's sacred hand in one year than have ever been cured by all the physicians and chirurgeons of his three kingdoms ever since his happy restoration." Wiseman, a writer on surgery, who declares that he was an eye-witness of hundreds of cases, and had accounts of others by letter from all parts of the kingdom, and also from Ireland, Scotland, and Guernsey, makes a similar declaration. In fact, the belief in this Royal power appears to have been almost universal, and