CHAPTER LV.
ENGLAND UNDER THE STUARTS: THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION.
(1603–1714.)
I. The First Two Stuarts.
1. Reign of James the First (1603–1625).
The "Divine Right" of Kings and the "Royal Touch."—With the end of the Tudor line (see p. 561), James VI. of Scotland, son of Mary Stuart, came to the English throne, as James I. of England. The accession of the House of Stuart brought England and Scotland under the same sovereign, though each country still retained its own Parliament.
The Stuarts were firm believers in the doctrine of the "Divine Right" of kings. They held that hereditary princes are the Lord's anointed, and that their authority can in no way be questioned or limited by people, priest, or Parliament. James I.'s own words were, "As it is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what God can do, so it is high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can do, or to say that the king cannot do this or that."
This doctrine found much support in the popular superstition of the "Royal Touch." The king was believed to possess the power—a gift transmitted through the royal line of England from Edward the Confessor—of healing scrofulous persons by the laying on of hands.[1] It is simply the bearing of this strange superstition upon the doctrine of the divine right of kings that concerns us now. "The political importance of this superstition,"
- ↑ Consult Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. I. p. 73. The French kings were also supposed to possess the same miraculous power, inherited, as most believed, from Louis the Saint.
