character may be mentioned "A Free and Impartial Inquiry into the Antiquity and Efficacy of Touching for the King's Evil," by William Beckett, F.R.S., a well known surgeon, 1722, and "Criterion, or Miracles Examined," by Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, 1754. Both of these writers admit that cures did result from the King's touch; the Bishop says that he personally knew a man who had been healed. Mr. Beckett deals with these cures with much judgment. He points out how likely it was that the excitement of the visit to the court, both in anticipation and in realisation, and the impressive ceremony there conducted, would in many instances so affect the constitution, causing the blood to course through the veins more quickly, as to effect a cure.
Mr. Beckett also gives extremely good reasons for doubting whether Edward the Confessor ever did "touch" for scrofula. The gift is not mentioned in the Bull of Pope Alexander III by which the Confessor was canonised, nor by several earlier writers than William of Malmesbury, monks only too eager to glorify their benefactor.
Henry VII was the first to surround the ceremony of touching with an imposing religious service, and to give a touch-piece to the patient. Henry VIII does not seem to have followed the practice of his father to any great extent, and there was some disturbance about it in the next few reigns. The Catholics denied that Queen Elizabeth could possess the healing virtue, and when actual cures were cited to them one of their bishops declared that these were due, not to the royal virtue, but to the virtue of the sign of the cross. All the Stuart kings, Charles II particularly, exercised their hereditary powers most diligently. Macaulay states
