"The Kings of England and _Fraunce_ by a peculiar guift cure the King's
evill by touching them with their handes, and so doth the seaventh
sonne."--_Ant. Miraldus_, p. 384.
Fuller intimates that St. Louis was the first king of France who healed the
evil. "So witnesseth Andrew Chasne, a French author, and others."[19]
Speaking of the illness of Louis XI., "at Forges neere to Chinon," in
March, 1480, Philip de Commines says:
"After two daies he recovered his speech and his memory after a sort:
and because he thought no man understood him so wel as my selfe, his
pleasure was that I should alwaies be by him, and he confessed himselfe
to the officiall in my presence, otherwise they would never have
understood one another. He had not much to say, for he was shriven not
long before, because the Kings of Fraunce use alwaies to confesse
themselves when they touch those that be sick of the King's evill,
which he never failed to do once a weeke. If other Princes do not the
like, they are to blame, for continuall a great number are troubled
with that disease."[20]
Pierre Desrey, in his _Great Chronicles of Charles VIII._, has the
following passage relating to that monarch's proceedings at Rome in
January, 1494-5:--
"Tuesday the 20th, the king heard mass in the French chapel, and
afterwards touched and cured many afflicted with the king's evil, to
the great astonishment of the Italians who witnessed the miracle."[21]
And speaking of the king at Naples, in April, 1495, the same chronicler
says:--
"The 15th of April, the king, after hearing mass in the church of the
Annonciada, was confessed, and then touched and cured great numbers
that were afflicted with the evil--a disorder that abounded much all
over Italy--when the spectators were greatly edified at the powers of
such an extraordinary gift.
* * * * *
"On Easter day, the 19th of April, the king was confessed in the church
of St. Peter, adjoining to his lodgings, and then touched for the evil
a second time."[22]
Fuller, in remarking upon the cure of the king's evil by the touch of our
English monarchs, observes:--
"The kings of France share also with those of England in this
miraculous cure. And Laurentius reports, that when Francis I., king of
France, was kept prisoner in Spain, he, notwithstanding his exile and
restraint, daily cured infinite multitudes of people of that disease;
according to this epigram:
_'Hispanos inter sanat rex chaeradas, estque_
_Captivus Superis gratus, ut ante fuit.'_
'The captive king the evil cures in Spain:
Dear, as before, he doth to God remain.'
"So it seemeth his medicinal quality is affixed not {149} to his
prosperity, but person; so that during his durance, he was fully free
to exercise the same."[23]
Cavendish, relating what took place on Cardinal Wolsey's embassy to Francis
I., in 1527, has the following passage:--
"And at his [the king's] coming in to the bishop's palace [at Amiens],
where he intended to dine with my Lord Cardinal, there sat within a
cloister about two hundred persons diseased with the king's evil, upon
their knees. And the king, or ever he went to dinner, provised every of
them with rubbing them and blessing them with his bare hands, being
bareheaded all the while; after whom followed his almoner distributing
of money unto the persons diseased. And that done, he said certain
prayers over them, and then washed his hands, and so came up into his
chamber to dinner, where as my lord dined with him."[24]
Laurentius, cited by Fuller in the page already given, was, it seems,
physician in ordinary to King Henry IV. of France. In a treatise entitled
_De Mirabili Strumarum Curatione_, he stated that the kings of England
never cured the evil. "To cry quits with him," Dr. W. Tucker, chaplain to
Queen Elizabeth, in his _Charismate_, denied that the kings of France ever
originally cured the evil
"but _per aliquam propaginem_, 'by a sprig of right,' derived from the
primitive power of our English kings, under whose jurisdiction most of
the French provinces were once subjected."[25]
Louis XVI., immediately after his coronation at Rheims, in 1775, went to
the Abbey of St. Remi to pay his devotions, and to touch for the evil. The
ceremony took place in the Abbey Park, and is thus described in a paper
entitled _Coronation of the Kings of France prior to the Revolution_, by
Charles White, Esq.:--
"Two thousand four hundred individuals suffering under this affliction,
having been assembled in rows in the park, his majesty, attended by the
household physicians, approached the first on the right. The
physician-in-chief then placed his hand upon the patient's head, whilst
a captain of the guards held the hands of the latter joined before his
bosom. The king, with his head uncovered, then touched the patient by
making the sign of the cross upon his face, exclaiming, 'May God heal
thee! The king touches thee.' The whole two thousand four hundred
having been healed in a similar manner, and the grand almoner having
distributed alms to each in succession, three attendants, called _chefs
de goblet_, presented themselves with golden salvers, on which were
three embroidered napkins. The first, steeped in vinegar, was then
offered to the king by Monsieur; the second, dipped in plain water, was
presented by the Count d'Artois; and the third, moistened with orange
water, was banded by the Duke of Orleans."[26]
The power of the seventh son to heal the evil (mentioned in the MS. I have
cited) is humourously alluded to in the _Tatler_ (No. 11.). I subjoin the
passage, which occurs in a letter signed "D. Distaff."
"_Tipstaff_, being a seventh son, used to cure the _king's evil_; but
his rascally descendants are so far from having that healing quality,
that by a touch upon the shoulder, they give a man such an ill habit of
body, that he can never come abroad afterwards."
I imagine that by the seventh son is meant the seventh son of a seventh
son.