There are several instances in ancient history illustrating the healing
virtue residing or alleged to reside in the person of a king. Pyrrhus,
King of Epirus, according to Plutarch, cured colics and affections of
the spleen by laying patients on their backs and passing his great toe
over their bodies. Suelin relates that when the Emperor Vespasian was
at Alexandria a poor blind man came to him saying that the god Serapis
had revealed to him that if he, the Emperor, would touch his eyes with
his spittle, his sight would be restored. Vespasian was angry and would
have driven the man away, but some of those around him urged him to
exercise his power, and at last he consented and cured the poor man of
his blindness and some others of lameness. Cœlius Spartianus declares
that the Emperor Adrian cured dropsy by touching patients with the
tips of his fingers. The Eddas tell how King Olaf healed the wounds of
Egill, the Icelandic hero, by laying on of hands and singing proverbs.
A legend of the counts of Hapsburg declares that at one time they could
cure a sick person by kissing him.
The superstition crystallised itself in the practice of the English
and French kings of touching for the cure of scrofula, or king’s evil
as the disease consequently came to be named. The term scrofula is
itself one of the curiosities of etymology. Scrofula is the diminutive
of scrota, a sow, and means a little pig. It is conjectured that the
name was adopted from the idea of pigs burrowing under the surface of
straw and likening to that the pig’s back sort of shape of the ulcers
characteristic of the disease.
The first English king who undertook this treatment, so far as is
known, was Edward the Confessor, who reigned from 1042 to 1066. But
there is evidence that the French kings had practised it earlier.
Robert the Pious (970-1031), son of Hughes Capet, is said to have
exercised the miraculous power, and Church legend goes back five
hundred years before this, attributing the origin of the gift to the
date of the conversion of Clovis, A.D. 496. On that occasion
the holy oil for the coronation of the Conqueror was brought direct
from heaven in a phial carried by a dove, and the healing faculty was
conferred at the same time. Most of the French kings down to Louis XV
continued to touch, and it was even suggested that the practice should
be resumed by Louis XVIII after the Restoration in 1815, but that
monarch’s advisers prudently resolved that it would not do to risk the
ridicule of modern France.
The records of Edward the Confessor’s miraculous feats of healing
are obtained from William of Malmesbury, who wrote his Chronicles in
the first half of the 12th century, about a hundred years after the
Confessor’s reign. The earliest printed edition of the Chronicles
appeared in 1577, and Shakespeare undoubtedly drew from it the
description of the ceremony which is given in Macbeth (Act iv, Sc. 3).
Malcolm and Macduff are represented as being in England “in a room of
the King’s palace” (Edward the Confessor’s). The doctor tells them
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.
Asked about the nature of the disease the doctor says “’Tis called the
evil,” and he adds
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.
There is no evidence that any of the Norman kings performed the rite,
but it is on record that Henry II performed cures by touching, and
allusions to the practice by Edward II, Edward III, Richard II, and
Henry IV have been found in old manuscripts. It is probable, too, that
the other kings preceding the Tudors followed the fashion when the
interval between their wars gave them the necessary leisure. From Henry
VII to Queen Anne all our rulers except Cromwell “touched.” Oliver,
not being able to claim the virtue by reason of his descent, would
certainly not have been trusted, and Dutch William had no sympathy
with the superstition. It is recorded of him that once he yielded to
importunity and went through the form of touching. “God gave thee
better health and more sense” was the unsentimental benediction he
pronounced. Queen Anne, as is well known, “touched” Dr. Johnson in his
childhood, but it is recorded that in this case no cure was effected.
Boswell says that Johnson’s mother in taking the child (who was then
between two and three years old) to London for the ceremony was
acting on the advice of Sir John Floyer, who was at that time a noted
physician at Lichfield. The “touch-piece” presented by Queen Anne to
Dr. Johnson is preserved in the British Museum. The Pretender, Charles
Edward, touched someone at Holyrood House, Edinburgh, and his partisans
said a cure was effected in three weeks. Which proved his right to the
throne of England.
The story told by William of Malmesbury about Edward the Confessor is
that “a young woman that had a husband about the same age as herself,
but no child, was afflicted with overflowing of humours in her neck,
which broke out in great nobbs, was commanded in a dream to apply to
the King to wash it. To court she goes, and the King being at his
Devotions all alone dip’d his fingers in water and dabbel’d the woman’s
neck, and he had no sooner taken away his hand than she found herself
better.” William goes on to tell that within a week she was well, and
that within a year she was brought to bed of twins.
Modern doctors have forgotten and despised the strange story of this
royal touch, but two and three centuries ago they very seriously
discussed it. Reports of marvellous and numerous cures were
confidently related, and the writers who had no faith in the virtue
of the performance admitted the genuineness of many of the cases.
Sergeant-Surgeon Dickens, Queen Anne’s surgeon, narrated the most
curious instance. At the request of one young woman he brought her to
the Queen to be touched. After the performance he impressed upon her
the importance of never parting with the gold medal which was given to
all patients; for it appears that he had reason to expect that she was
likely to sell it. She promised always to retain it, and in due course
she was cured. In time, thinking all risk had passed, she disposed
of the touch-piece; the disease returned; she confessed her fault
penitently to Dr. Dickens, and by his aid was touched again, and once
more cured. Surgeon Wiseman, chief surgeon in Charles I’s army, and
afterwards Sergeant-Surgeon in Charles II’s household, described the
cures effected by that monarch. He had been an eye-witness of hundreds
of cures, he says. Many other testimonies of the same kind might be
quoted, but it is as well to remark that a habit grew up of describing
the touching itself as a cure.
Careful and intelligent inquiries into the alleged success of the
practice by investigators who were by no means believers in any actual
royal virtue, but who yet admitted unhesitatingly the reality of many
of the claimed cures, are on record. Among treatises of this character
may be mentioned “A Free and Impartial Inquiry into the Antiquity and
Efficacy of Touching for the King’s Evil,” by William Beckett, F.R.S.,
a well known surgeon, 1722, and “Criterion, or Miracles Examined,” by
Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, 1754. Both of these writers admit
that cures did result from the King’s touch; the Bishop says that he
personally knew a man who had been healed. Mr. Beckett deals with
these cures with much judgment. He points out how likely it was that
the excitement of the visit to the court, both in anticipation and in
realisation, and the impressive ceremony there conducted, would in
many instances so affect the constitution, causing the blood to course
through the veins more quickly, as to effect a cure.
Mr. Beckett also gives extremely good reasons for doubting whether
Edward the Confessor ever did “touch” for scrofula. The gift is not
mentioned in the Bull of Pope Alexander III by which the Confessor was
canonised, nor by several earlier writers than William of Malmesbury,
monks only too eager to glorify their benefactor.
Henry VII was the first to surround the ceremony of touching with an
imposing religious service, and to give a touch-piece to the patient.
Henry VIII does not seem to have followed the practice of his father to
any great extent, and there was some disturbance about it in the next
few reigns. The Catholics denied that Queen Elizabeth could possess the
healing virtue, and when actual cures were cited to them one of their
bishops declared that these were due, not to the royal virtue, but to
the virtue of the sign of the cross. All the Stuart kings, Charles
II particularly, exercised their hereditary powers most diligently.
Macaulay states that Charles II touched nearly one hundred thousand
persons during his reign. In his record year, 1682, he performed the
rite eight thousand five hundred times.
Evelyn gives the following account of the performance, which, as will
be seen, was no light duty. He describes it 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 formalities says:--‘He put his hands
upon them and healed them.’ This he said to every one in particular.
When they have been all touched, 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 arms 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.”
In 1684 Thomas Rosewell, evidently an unrepentant Puritan, was tried
before Judge Jeffries on a charge of high treason, the indictment
alleging that he had said “the people made a flocking to the king
upon pretence of being healed of the king’s evil, which he could not
do.” Rosewell had further declared that he and others, being priests
and prophets, could do as much as the king. And Rosewell had told how
Jeroboam’s hand had dried up when he would have seized the man of God
who had prophesied against him, and how the king’s 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.