"above 6000" were touched." The years in which the largest numbers were touched, are the first of the series (1660) and the last two in 1660, 6005 were touched; in 1681, 6007; and in 1682, 8477: the average number per year is 4323. The greatest numbers are generally in the spring; and the greatest in any single month are 2461 in April 1681, and 2471 in April 1682-the concluding months of the last two years. Bishop Cartwright (Diary, 28 Aug. 1687,) records his attendance on one occasion, when James II. healed 350 persons.

The value of the gold distributed must have been in proportion to the numbers touched. But the same minuteness has not been observed in recording it. In Henry VIII.'s reign each person seems to have received seven shillings and six pence, to which the value of the angel was raised in his 18th year (1526-7.) 8 In Queen Elizabeth's time each received ten shillings, the value of the angel. Fabian Phillips in 1663 (On Purveyance, p. 257,) says the yearly charge was at least 3000l., the gold being of the value of ten shillings given to every one at the Healing. The substitution of silver touch-pieces by James II. rendered the ceremony less burdensome to that Sovereign after his abdication.

The healing power of the Royal Touch thus conferred was universally believed-not by the uneducated, or the poor alone, but by the highest in the state, and the best and most enlightened of those who lived during this long period; and, among that number, by the physicians and surgeons of the day, many of them possessing acquirements far in advance of the knowlege of their age-men who, as Bishop Douglas observes (Criterion, or Miracles examined, ed. 1832, p. 126), "are not very ready in admitting that cures may be effected without making use of the medicines which they themselves prescribe."

Gilbertus Anglicus, a physician who lived about the time of Henry III. and Edward I., is one of the earliest medical writers, whose work is known, who alludes to the exercise of

7 Browne, Char. Bas., p. 79.

8 Privy Purse Expenses, 1529-32, Sir H. Nicolas. Snelling, View of the Gold Coinage. The Angel was first coined 5 Edw. IV., of the value of six shillings and eight pence: the noble being raised to eight shillings and four pence. The

value varied in different reigns; e. g., James I. raised it in his ninth year to eleven shillings. Charles I.'s was worth ten shillings.

9 Aureo Tooker, 96.

nummo

solidorum decem.

the power, in words which show the antiquity of the practice. He says scrofula is also called the King's Evil, because the kings have the power to cure it. (Compendium Medicinæ,

lib. iii.)

John of Gadsden, a Fellow of Merton College,' physician to Edward II., remarkable as being the first Englishman who was consulted at Court as physician, advises recourse to the Royal touch in desperate cases, as the Kings have the power of curing it. (Rosa Anglica, lib. ii. c. 1.)

Archbishop Bradwardine, writing in the time of Edward III., appeals to the writings of former times, and the concurring testimony of the kingdoms of that day for the cures. performed by the Kings of England and France, by prayer and blessing, touching with the sign of the cross, in the name of Jesus Christ. (In Libro de causâ Dei, lib. i. cap. 1., coroll. pars 32, p. 39, quoted by Freind, Hist. of Physic, vol. ii., App., and in L'Estrange's Alliance of Divine Offices, Oxf. 1846, additional notes.)

Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and afterwards Chancellor to Henry VI., writing, upon the accession of Henry IV., in defence of the House of Lancaster, mentions the power as one of the attributes of the Sovereign, though one which does not descend in the female line to a Queen. (Freind, Hist. of Physic, vol. ii., App.)

Andrew Borde, a learned man, a physician in the time of Henry VIII., alludes to the power in his two works, the "Introduction of Knowledge," (chap. i.) and the "Breviary of Health," (chap. ccxxxvi.)

Dean Tooker, who, as one of Queen Elizabeth's Chaplains, for several years attended the public Healings, bears witness that many wretched sufferers were restored to their former health, by the Queen's touching, aided by the prayers of the whole Church assembled joining in the solemn ceremony. (Charisma, sive Donum Sanationis, pp. 32, 91.)

Clowes, a man of high surgical reputation, Surgeon to St. Bartholomew's and Christ's Hospitals, appointed to attend the forces by sea and land in the wars of Queen Elizabeth's time, afterwards sworn Surgeon to the Queen, and subsequently Serjeant Surgeon to James I., describing the occasional malignity of scrofulous ulcers, says (p. 4), "These

1 Ad integrum septennium publicus medicine Professor. Bp. Tanner, Biblioth. Brit. Hib., quoting Pits. MS. Mert.

VOL. X.

FF

kinds do rather presage a divine and holy curation, which is most admirable to the world, that I have seen and known performed and done by the sacred and blessed hands of the Queen's most Royal Majesty, whose happiness and felicity the Lord long continue." After relating a cure by the Queen's touch, he concludes his observations: "And here I do confidently affirm and stedfastly believe that (for the certain cure of this most miserable malady) when all arts and sciences do fail, her Highness is the only day-star, peerless and without comparison;" ending with a prayer, "that she may for ever reign over us (if it please the Lord God) even unto the end of the world, still to cure and heal many thousands more than ever she hath yet done." (A right fruitful and approved Treatise, for the artificial cure of that malady called in Latin Struma, and in English the Evil, cured by Kings and Queens of England, 1602, p. 50.) 2

Fuller says, if any doubt the cures, they are remitted to their own eyes for farther confirmation.3 (Church History, vol. i., A.D. 1061–1066.)

Wiseman, Chief Surgeon in Charles I.'s army, and afterwards Serjeant Surgeon to Charles II., whose writings are deservedly held in respect by surgeons at the present day, says, "I myself have been a frequent eye-witness of many hundreds of cures performed by his Majesty's Touch alone, without any assistance of chirurgery; and those, many of them, such as had tired out the endeavors of able chirurgeons before they came thither. It were endless to recite what I myself have seen, and what I have received acknowlegements of by letter, not only from the several parts of this nation, but also from Ireland, Scotland, Jersey, and Garnsey." (Treatises, book iv. c. i.)

Archbishop Sancroft, in the sermon preached at Westminster Abbey, upon the first consecration of Bishops after

2 Among the commendatory verses prefixed are some by Thomas Parkin, "Chirurgie Professor," beginning

"The happy sacred hand of our dread sovereign Queen,

The princely loving zeal of her most Royal heart,

Throughout her highness' land, her subjects all have seen,

To cure, to help, to heal, our care, our harm,

our smart.

3 See, in confirmation, Heylin's Animadversions, Examen Historicum, 1659, p. 47. "The curative adjunct with a tangit

te Rex, sanat Deus, is used in the conveyance of that charism, or miraculous gift of Healing, which, derived from the infancy of the Church, the inaugured Monarchs of this land so happily enjoy : in which expression of their sanative virtue they not only surpass the fabulous cures of Pyrrhus or Vespasian, of which Pliny and others make mention, but the pretended virtues of other Christian Monarchs." John Bulwer, M.D., Chirologia, or the Natural language of the Hand, 1644, p. 148.

the Restoration, alludes to the gift of healing residing in the sovereign (British Magazine, August, 1848, p. 141.)

4

Browne, Surgeon in ordinary to Charles II., the historian of his Healings, from whose work I have drawn largely in this account, speaking of himself, says, "Having evermore been conversant in chirurgery almost from my cradle, being the sixth generation of my own relations, all eminent masters of our profession; some of the latter of which have been extraordinary well known for their parts and skill by many of the most worthy and knowing masters of our society. I came early, also, to the practice thereof in this great city, and have for above twenty-four years seen the practic, as well as read the theorical part thereof; and this not at whiles and intervals, but I had the eye of the hospital as my first and early gleanings; and since I could write man, the late wars had my skill shown on myself as well as many others who were committed to my charge." (Choradelogia, Address to the Reader.) Yet he did not attribute the sole merit of the cures of which he was so frequent a witness, to the bare imposition of his Royal master's hand: for he says, "Whence it cometh, and what the efficient cause thereof is, whether proceeding from the naked discourse of the words used at the ceremony, or the solemnity of the pious and religious action, or of any created virtue arising hence, I shall presume to offer this as a foundation against all dispute whatsoever. That no miracle was ever done by an inherent virtue in man alone, not this of his Majesty's royal healing, procuring and affording hereby this health to the sick, which we daily see and find they do hereby purchase and enjoy; but there is and must be God Almighty's hand going along with it, for no mortal's virtue or piety or power hath strength or efficacy enough in it to perform this sovereign sanative faculty: nor can the ceremonies or vestments any wise effect the same." And as a farther acknowlegement of the King's success, he adds, "I do humbly presume to assert that more souls have been healed by his Majesty's sacred hand in one year than have ever been cured by all the physicians and Chirurgeons of his

4"Let us hope well of the healing of the wounds of the daughter of our people, since they are under the cure of those very hands, upon which God hath entailed a miraculous gift of healing, as if it were on purpose to raise up our hopes into

some confidence, that we shall owe one day to those sacred hands, next under God, the healing of the Church's and the people's evils, as well as of the King'-."-Sermon, London, 1660, p. 33.

three kingdoms ever since his happy Restoration." (Charisma Basilicon, 18, 19, 81.)

Sir Thomas Browne's opinion is shown by his advising patients to avail themselves of it: 5 one patient, the child of a nonconformist, he sent to Breda to be Breda to be touched by Charles II. (Char. Basil., p. 187.)

Bishop Bull says, "That divers persons desperately laboring under it have been cured by the mere touch of the Royal hand, assisted with the prayers of the priests of our Church attending, is unquestionable; unless the faith of all our ancient writers, and the consentient report of hundreds of most credible persons in our own age attesting the same be to be questioned. And yet they say some of those diseased persons return from the sovereign remedy re infectâ, without any cure done upon them. How comes this to pass? God hath not given this gift of Healing to our Royal Line, but that he still keeps the reins of it in his own hands, to let them loose, or restrain them, as he pleaseth." (Sermon V., p. 133. Oxford, 1827.)

Anstis, Garter King at arms, says, "The miraculous gift in curing this distemper by the royal touch of our King, as well as the French King, is undeniable." (Discourse on Coronations, quoted in Whiston's Memoirs.)

Among Dean Swift's letters the following passage occurs: "I visited the Duchess of Ormond this morning she does not go over with the Duke [to Ireland]. I spoke to her to get a lad touched for the evil, the son of a grocer in Capel Street, one Bell-the ladies have bought sugar and plums of him. Mrs. Mary used to go there often. This is Patrick's account; and the poor fellow has been here some months with his boy. But the Queen has not been able to touch, and it now grows so warm, I fear she will not at all." (Journal to Stella, Letter 22, Chelsea, 8 May, 1711.)

Carte, the historian, lost the patronage of the City of London, for asserting his belief that the power of healing existed in the Stuarts: the Corporation, by a vote in 1748, withdrew their subscription to his work. (Nicholls's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ii.)

Since the Sovereigns have ceased to touch, the history has been examined with care by numerous writers of the last century, of whom it may be sufficient to mention these. 6

Pettigrew, 149, remarking on Wilkin's Life of Sir T. Browne.

6" Absit ut vim Regiam quasi cœlitus delapsam creditam, et mirà hominum