hand had been restored on the prayer of the prophet. In his defence Rosewell had sneered at the Latin of the indictment, which spoke of the "Morbus Regni Anglici," which, as he said, would mean the disease of the English kingdom, not the king's evil. Jeffries, having taunted the prisoner and his witnesses with being "snivelling saints," insisted on a verdict of guilty, and would no doubt have had the mocker's ears cut off; but it is satisfactory to know that Charles II, who probably had not more faith in his healing power than the accused, ordered him to be pardoned.
The English prayer-book contained a form of service for this ceremony up to the year 1719.
Queen Anne was the last ruler in England to touch. There is no record of any of the Georges attempting the miracle, but the young Pretender, Charles Edward, when claiming to be Prince of Wales, touched a female child at Holyrood House in 1745, and is said to have effected a cure, and after his death in 1780 his brother, Cardinal York, still touched at Rome.
Louis XV was the last King of France who touched. Louis XIV fulfilled the duty on a larger scale, and doubtless with the utmost confidence in his royal virtue. The formula used by the kings of France when they had touched a patient was "Le roi te touche, Dieu te guerisse" ("The king touches thee; may God heal thee"). It is said that Henri of Navarre, when in the thick of the fight at Ivry (1590), as he laid about him with his sword right and left, gaily shouted this familiar expression.
Cramp Rings.
Faith in "cramp rings" corresponds in many respects with the reverential confidence in the royal touch as
