Curialia Miscellanea, or Anecdotes of Old Times / Regal, Noble, Gentilitial, and Miscellaneous: Including Authentic Anecdotes of the Royal Household, and the Manners and Customs of the Court, at an Early Period of the English History

by Samuel Pegge

QUEEN ANNE.

It appears by the Newspapers of the time, that on the 30th of March, 1714, two hundred persons were touched by Queen Anne[217]. Amongst these was Samuel Johnson, afterwards the justly celebrated Moral Writer. He was sent by the advice of Sir John Floyer, then a Physician at Lichfield; and many years afterwards, being asked if he could remember Queen Anne, said, "he had a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a Lady in diamonds, and a long black hood."

The Honourable Daines Barrington[218] has preserved an anecdote, which he heard from an old man who was witness in a cause with respect to this supposed miraculous power of Healing. "He had, by his evidence, fixed the time of a fact, by Queen Anne's having been at Oxford, and touched him, whilst a child, for the Evil. When he had finished his evidence, I had an opportunity of asking him, whether he was really cured? Upon which he answered, with a significant smile, "that he believed himself to have never had any complaint that deserved to be considered as the Evil; but that his parents were poor, and had no objection to the bit of gold."

The learned and honourable Writer very properly observes on this occasion, "that this piece of gold, which was given to those who were touched, accounts for the great resort upon this occasion, and the supposed afterwards miraculous cures."