[193]: 1. Cecil upon his knees. William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth. He is represented "on his knees" at the magnificent tomb of his wife and daughter. This tomb, however, is not in the chapel of St. Edmund, but in the adjoining chapel of St. Nicholas.
193: 3. Who died by the prick of a needle. This story was formerly told of Lady Elizabeth Russell, whose richly decorated tomb is in St. Edmund's chapel.
193: 10. The two coronation chairs. In that chapel of Edward the Confessor which is the heart of the Abbey. One chair is said to have been that of Edward the Confessor; in it every sovereign of England from Edward I to Edward VII has been crowned. The other was made for Mary when she and her husband William were jointly crowned king and queen of England.
193: 11. The stone ... brought from Scotland. The "stone of Scone," traditionally reputed to be that on which Jacob rested his head when he had the vision of the ladder reaching up to heaven. It was brought from Ireland to Scone in Scotland, and all Scottish kings were crowned on it there till Edward I of England brought it to London in 1296, and ordered it enclosed "in a chair of wood," and placed in the Abbey.
193: 25. Edward the Third's sword. "The monumental sword that conquered France," as Dryden calls it, stands between the coronation chairs.
[194]: 2. The Black Prince. Edward, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Edward III, who died in 1376 before his father. He is buried, not in the Abbey, but in the cathedral at Canterbury.
194: 8. Touched for the evil. Scrofula, called "king's evil," because it was supposed that it could be cured by the touch of a legitimate sovereign. King William III, as he was king only by act of Parliament, had not "touched"; but Queen Anne, unquestionably a legitimate monarch, resumed the practice. Samuel Johnson was touched by her in his infancy, but without effect. No sovereign after Anne pretended to this power. The act of "touching" was accompanied by an elaborate ceremony, the ritual for which continued to be included in the Book of Common Prayer until 1719. For an account of the procedure, see Ashton, Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chap. xxx, pp. 325-326.
194: 12. One of our English kings without an head. Henry V. The head of the effigy, which was of solid silver, was stolen in the reign of Henry VIII, at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries.
[195]: 4. His lodgings in Norfolk Buildings. In II Sir Roger is said, when in town, to "live in Soho Square," a more aristocratic quarter. That paper was written by Steele; this by Addison.