We know that the undoubted influence of the mind on the body, and the power of suggestion and expectant attention, apply only to subjective states and functional ailments. Thus it is intelligible why so many people of education and culture, on the principle that seeing is believing, were able to testify to miraculous cures in their own experience.[86:1]
William Andrews, in "Historic Romance," says that the records of the Town of Preston, Lancashire, show that the local Corporation voted grants of money to enable patients to make the journey to London, to be touched for the evil. In the year 1682 bailiffs were instructed to "pay unto James Harrison, bricklayer, ten shillings, towards carrying his son to London, in order to the procuring of His Majesty's touch." Again, in 1687, being the third year of James II, when the King was at Chester, the Preston Town Council passed a vote, ordering the payment to two young women, of five shillings each, "towards their charge in going to Chester to get His Majesty's touch."
Thomas Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, wrote in his diary, August 27, 1687: "I was at His Majesty's levee, from whence, at nine o'clock, I attended him into the closet, where he healed three hundred and fifty persons."
Queen Anne (1702-1714) was the last of the English sovereigns who exercised the royal prerogative of healing by laying-on of hands. She made an official announcement in the London "Gazette," March 12, 1712, of her intention to "touch publicly." Samuel Johnson, then a child of about three years of age, was one of the last who tested the efficacy of this superstitious rite, and without success. Acting upon the advice of Sir John Floyer, a noted physician of Lichfield, Mrs. Johnson took her son to London, where he was touched by the Queen. When asked in later years if he could remember the latter, he used to say that he had a "confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds and a long black hood."[88:1] George I, the successor of Queen Anne, regarded the Royal Touch as a purely superstitious method of healing, and during his reign the practice fell into desuetude.
The English jurist, Daines Barrington (1727-1800), in his "Observations upon the Statutes," relates the case of an old man whom he was examining as a witness. This man stated that he had been touched for the evil by Queen Anne, when she was at Oxford. Upon being asked whether the treatment had been effective, he replied facetiously that he did not believe that he ever had the evil, but that his parents were poor, and did not object to the piece of gold.[88:2]
During the reign of George II, a writer of a speculative turn of mind queried whether the disuse of this long-established custom might be attributed to the sullenness of the reigning prince, who, as was generally known, had received many evidences of his subjects' displeasure; or whether the alleged divine power of healing by the Royal Touch had been withdrawn from him. And it was replied that the sovereign had as good a title as any of his predecessors to perform this holy operation. Moreover, he was so much in love with all sorts of pageantry and acts of power that he would willingly do his part. But the degeneracy and wickedness of the times, which tended to bring all pious and holy things into contempt, and then into disuse, was the reason for this neglect.[89:1]
In the year 1746, or thereabouts, one Christopher Lovel, a native of Wells, in Somersetshire, but afterwards a resident of Bristol, being sadly afflicted with the King's Evil, and having during many years made trial of all the remedies which medical science could suggest, and without any effect, decided to go abroad in search of a cure. Proceeding to France, he was touched at Avignon by the eldest lineal descendant of a race of kings, who had, for a long succession of ages, healed by exercising the royal prerogative. But this descendant and heir had not at that time been crowned. Notwithstanding this fact, however, the usual effects followed, and from the moment that the man was touched, and invested with the narrow ribbon, to which a small silver coin was pendant, according to the rites prescribed in the office appointed by the Church for that solemnity, he began to mend, and recovered strength daily, arriving at Bristol in good health, after an absence of some four months.
Such, briefly, is an account of this remarkable case, as given in Thomas Carte's "History of England," published about 1746. But a contributor to the "Gentleman's Magazine," January 13, 1747, who signed himself Amicus Veritatis, wrote in reference to the foregoing account, expressing surprise that sensible people should give credit to such a tale, which was calculated to support the old threadbare notion of the divine hereditary right of royal personages to cure by touch. The then reigning sovereign, George II, wrote he, despised such childish delusions.
The report of this alleged wonderful case made a great noise among the ignorant classes. But the sceptic writer above mentioned argued that Lovel's cure was but temporary, and that the benefit was due to change of air and a strict regimen, rather than to the touch of the Pretender's hand at Avignon. For, queried he, can any man with a grain of reason believe that such an idle, superstitious charm as the touch of a man's hand can convey a virtue sufficiently efficacious to heal so stubborn a disorder as the King's Evil?
French tradition ascribes the origin of the gift of healing by royal touch, to Saint Marculf, a monk whose Frankish ancestry is shown by his name, which signifies forest wolf. This personage was a native of Bayeux, and is reputed to have flourished in the sixth century a. d. His relics were preserved in an abbey at Corbigny, and thither the French monarchs were accustomed to resort, after their coronation at Rheims, to obtain the pretended power of curing the King's Evil, by touching the relics of this saint. But according to the historian, François Eudes de Mézeray (1610-1683), the gift was bestowed upon King Clovis (466-511) at the time of his baptism.
