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By William Andrews, f.r.h.s.

The practice of touching for the cure of scrofula—a disease more generally known as king’s evil—prevailed for a long period in England. Edward the Confessor who reigned from 1042 to 1066, appears to be the first monarch in this country who employed this singular mode of treatment.

About a century after the death of Edward the Confessor, William of Malmesbury compiled his “Chronicle of the Kings of England,” and in this work is the earliest allusion to the subject. Holinshed has placed on record some interesting details respecting Edward the Confessor. “As it has been thought,” says Holinshed, in writing of the king, “he was inspired with the gift of prophecy, and also to have the gift of healing infirmities and disease commonly called the king’s evil, and left that virtue, as it were, a portion of inheritance to his successors, the kings of this realm.” The first edition of the “Chronicle” was published in 1577, and from it Shakespeare drew much material for his historical dramas. There is an allusion to this singular superstition in Macbeth, which it will be interesting to reproduce.

Malcolm and Macduff are in England, “in a room in the King’s palace” (the palace of King Edward the Confessor):—

“Malcolm.	Comes the King forth I pray you?
Doctor.	Aye, sir! There are a crew of wretched souls That stay his cure: their malady convinces The great assay of art; but at his touch— Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand— They presently amend.
Malcolm.	I thank you, Doctor.
Macduff.	What’s the disease he means?
Malcolm.	’Tis called the evil: A most miraculous work in this good King; Which often, since my here-remain in England, I’ve 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 a golden stamp about their necks, Put on with holy prayers: and ’tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction. With this strange virtue, He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy, And sundry blessings hang about his throne That speak him full of grace.”

History does not furnish any facts respecting touching by the four kings of the House of Normandy. It is generally believed that the Norman monarchs did not practise the rite.

Henry II., the first of the Plantagenet line, emulated the Confessor. We know this fact from a record made by Peter of Blois, the royal chaplain, in which it is clearly stated that the king performed certain cures by touch. John of Gaddesden, in the days of Edward II., wrote a treatise in which he gave instructions for several modes of treatment for the disease, and if they failed, recommended the sufferers to seek cure by royal touch. Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury, lived in the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., and from his statements we learn that both kings kept up the observance.

Henry IV., the first king of the House of Lancaster, touched for the evil. This we learn from a “Defence to the title of House of Lancaster,” written by Sir John Fortesque, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench. He speaks of the practice as “belonging to the kings of England from time immemorial.” This pamphlet is preserved among the Cottonian manuscripts in the British Museum.

The earliest king of the House of Tudor, Henry VII., was the first to give a small gold piece, known as a touch-piece, to those undergoing the ceremony.

During the reign of the next monarch, Henry VIII., little attention appears to have been given to the subject. It was at this period largely practised in France. Cardinal Wolsey, when at the Court of Francis I., in 1527, witnessed the king touch two hundred people. On Easter Sunday, 1686, Louis XIV. is recorded to have touched 1,600. He used these words:—“Le Roy te touche, Dieu te guéisse.” (“The King touches thee. May God cure thee!”)

Coming back to the history of our own country, and dealing with the more interesting passages bearing on this theme, we find that in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, William Clowes, the Court Surgeon, believed firmly in the efficacy of the royal touch. “The king’s queen’s evil,” he says, “is a disease repugnant to nature, which grievous malady is known to be miraculously cured and healed by the sacred hands of the Queen’s most Royal Majesty, even by Divine inspiration and wonderful work and power of God, above man’s will, act, and expectation.” In this reign, under the title of “Charisma; sive Donum Sanationis,” a book was published by William Fookes bearing testimony to the cures effected by royal touch on all sorts and conditions of people from various parts of the country.

The Stuarts paid particular attention to the practice. No fewer than eleven proclamations published during the reign of Charles I. are preserved at the State Paper Office, and chiefly relate to the times the afflicted might attend the court to receive the royal touch. In course of time the king’s pecuniary means became limited, and he was unable to present gold touch-pieces, so silver was substituted, and many received the rite of touch only.

During the Commonwealth we have not any trace of Cromwell touching for the malady. During the rising in the West of England, the Duke of Monmouth, who claimed to be the rightful heir to the throne, touched several persons for the evil, and, said a newspaper of the time, with success. One of the charges made against him on his trial at Edinburgh for high treason, was, that he had “touched children of the King’s Evil.” Two witnesses proved the charge, having witnessed the ceremony at Taunton.

No sooner had another Stuart obtained the English crown than the ceremony was again performed. During the first year of the reign of Charles II., six thousand seven hundred and twenty-five persons were brought to His Majesty to be healed. The ceremony was often performed on a Sunday. Evelyn and Pepys were witnesses of these proceedings, and in their Diaries have recorded interesting particulars. Under date of 6th July, 1660, “His Majesty,” writes Evelyn, “began first to touch for ye evil, according to custome thus: Sitting under his state in the Banqueting House, the chirurgeons cause the sick to be brought or led up to the throne, where, they kneeling, ye king strokes their faces and cheeks with both his hands at once, at which instant a chaplaine in his fermalities says:—‘He put his hands upon them and healed them.’ This he said to every one in particular. When they have been all totched, they come up again in the same order; and the other chaplaine kneeling, and having an angel of gold strung on white ribbon on his arme, delivers them one by one to His Majestie, who puts them about the necks of the touched as they passe, while the first chaplaine repeats ‘That is ye true light which came into ye world.’ Then follows an epistle (as at first a gospel) with the liturgy, prayers for the sick, with some alteration, and then the Lord Chamberlain and the Comptroller of the Household bring a basin, ewer, and towel, for his Majesty to wash.”

Samuel Pepys witnessed the ceremony on April 13th, 1661, and refers to it in his Diary. “Went to the Banquet House, and there saw the King heal, the first time I ever saw him do it, which he did with great gravity, and it seemed to me to be an ugly office and a simple one.”

In Evelyn’s Diary on March 28th, 1684, there is a record of a serious accident, “There was,” he writes, “so great a concourse of people with their children to be touched for the evil, that six or seven were crushed to death by pressing at the chirurgeon’s door for tickets.”

According to Macaulay, Charles II. during his reign touched nearly a hundred thousand persons. In the year 1682 he performed the rite eight thousand five hundred times.

No person was allowed to enter the King’s presence for the purpose of receiving the rite without first obtaining a certificate from the minister of his parish from whence he came, nor unless he had not previously been touched. A proclamation of Charles II., dated January 9th, 1683, ordered a register of the certificates to be made. Here is a record drawn from the Old Town’s Book of Birmingham:—

“March 14th, 1683, Elizabeth, daughter of John and Anne Dickens, of Birmingham, in the county of Warwick, was certified for in order to obtayne his Majesty’s touch for her cure.

Henry Grove,		Minister.
John Birch,	}	Churchwardens.”
Henry Pater,

We cull from the churchwardens’ accounts of Terling, Essex, the following item:—

“1683 Dec^r. Pd. for his Majestie’s order for touching 00.00.06.”

A page in the register book of Bisley, Surrey, is headed thus, “Certificates for the Evill commonly called the kings Evill.” Two entries occur as follow:—

“Elizabeth Collier and Thomas Collier the children of Thomas Collier, Senior, had a certificate from the minister and churchwardens of Bisley, August 7th 1686.”

“Sarah Massey, the daughter of Richard Massey, had a certificate from the minister and churchwardens of Bisley, 1st April 1688.”

Old parish accounts often contain entries similar to the following, from Ecclesfield, Yorkshire:—

“1641.

Given to John Parkin wife towards her trauell to London to get cure of his Matie. for the disease called Euill which her soone Thom is visited withall

0. 6. 8.”

“The following extracts,” says a contributor to The Reliquary of January, 1894, “from the Minute Books of the Corporation of the city of York, show that general belief in the virtue of the touching by the King was unshaken at the end of the seventeenth century. It must be borne in mind that these Minutes do not record the acts of individuals, but were those of the Corporation of what was at that time one of the most important cities in the country, and that it was in administering Poor Law Relief that the grants were made.

In Vol. 38 of the Corporation Records, fo. 74b, under the date of February 28th, 1671, is the following:—

“Ordered that Elizabeth Trevis haue x^s given her for charges in carrying her daughter to London to be touched for the Evill.”

A few years later, on March 12th, 1678 (fo. 156b), occurs the following:—

“Anne Thornton to haue x^s for goeing to London to be touched for the euill.”

And again on March 3, 1687 (fo. 249b), ten shillings was granted for “carrying of Judith Gibbons & her Child & one Dorothy Browne to London to be touched by his Majestie in order to be healed of the Kings Evil.”

The Records of the Corporation of Preston, Lancashire, contain at least two references to this matter. In the year 1682 the bailiffs were instructed to “pay unto James Harrison, bricklayer, 10s. towards carrying his son to London, in order to the procuring of His Majesty’s touch.”

Five years later, when James II. was at Chester, the council passed a vote that “the Bailiff pay unto the persons undermentioned each of them 5s. towards their charge in going to Chester to get his Majesty’s touch:—Anne, daughter of Abel Mope; —— daughter Richard Letmore.”

It is recorded that James II. touched eight hundred persons in the choir of the Cathedral of Chester.

The ceremony cost, we learn from Macaulay, about £10,000 a year, and the amount would have been much greater but for the vigilance of the royal surgeons, whose business it was to examine the applicants, and to distinguish those who came for the cure, and those who came for the gold.

William III. declined to have anything to do with a ceremony he regarded as an imposture. “It is a silly superstition,” he said, when he heard that at the close of Lent his palace was besieged by a crowd of sick. “Give the poor creatures some money, and send them away.” On one occasion only was he induced to lay his hand on a sufferer. “God give you better health,” he said, “and more sense.”

The next to wear the crown was Queen Anne, and she revived the rite. In the London Gazette of March 12th, 1712, appeared an official announcement that the queen intended to touch for the evil. In Lent of that year, Dr. Johnson, then a child, went up to London with his mother in the stage coach that he might have the benefit of the royal touch. He was then between two and three years of age. “His mother,” writes Boswell, “yielding to the superstitious notion which, it is wonderful to think, prevailed so long in this country as to the virtue of regal touch (a notion to which a man of such inquiry and such judgment as Carte, the historian, could give credit), carried him to London, where he was actually touched by Queen Anne. Mrs. Johnson, indeed, as Mr. Hector informed me, acted by the advice of the celebrated Sir John Floyer, then a physician in Lichfield. Johnson used to talk of this very frankly, and Mrs. Piozzi has preserved his very picturesque description of the scene as it remained upon his fancy. Being asked if he could remember Queen Anne, ‘He had,’ he said, ‘a confused but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds and a long black hood.’ This touch, however, was without any effect.” The malady remained with Dr. Johnson to his death.

TOUCH-PIECE OF CHARLES II. (GOLD).

After the death of Queen Anne, no other English sovereign kept up the custom, although the service remained in the “Book of Common Prayer” as late as 1719.

The latest instance we have found of the ceremony being performed was in October, 1745, when Charles Edward, at Holyrood House, touched a child.

(GOLD). TOUCH-PIECES OF JAMES II. (SILVER).

In the preceding pages we have referred to “touch pieces,” and it will not be without interest to direct attention to some of the more notable examples. A small sum of money was given by Edward I., and it has been suggested that it was probably presented in the form of alms. Henry VII. gave a small gold coin known as the angel noble. It was of about six shillings and eight pence in value, and was a current coin of the period, and the smallest gold coin issued. On one side of the coin was a figure of the angel Michael overcoming the dragon, and on the other a ship on the waves. During the residence of Charles II. on the continent, those who visited him to receive the royal rite had to give him gold, but after the Restoration, “touch-pieces” were made expressly for presentation at the healings. They were small gold medals resembling angels, but they were not equal in value to the angels previously given. However they met a want when gold was in great demand. James II. had two kinds of touch pieces, one of gold and the other of silver, but they were not half the size of those given by Charles II. Queen Anne gave a touch-piece a little larger than that of James II. The touch-piece presented by this Queen to Dr. Johnson may, with other specimens, be seen in the British Museum.

TOUCH-PIECE OF ANNE (GOLD).

In a carefully-compiled article in the Archæological Journal, vol. x., p. 187-211, will be found some interesting particulars of touch-pieces, and to it we are indebted for the few details we have given bearing on this part of our subject.