Anciently there was great reputed sanative virtue in a seventh son; and he was looked upon as a heaven-born Doctor, and those his medical abilities were reverenced for that reason only by the common people. So far the Doctor would be safe, and might kill with impunity; but it was a crime to heal.
Thus I have a case before me in the Reign of King Charles I. where a poor unfortunate man, who was the seventh son of a seventh son, and never killed any body (for he was a gardener, and not a physician), was severely treated, because he pretended to have in him the faculty of healing several disorders, and especially the King's Evil, by the Touch or stroking of his hand. This man was imprudent enough to depreciate the Royal Touch; otherwise, at that time, he might have obtained a comfortable subsistence from his credulous patients; but that unfortunate intrenchment on the Royal Prerogative drew down upon him the double vengeance of the Court of Star-Chamber, and of the College of Physicians; which last, in the most courtly manner, denounced him to be an impostor[184]. Delenda est Carthago. It was highly necessary for the reputation of the Royal pretensions that this man should be proscribed.
The next person who appears to have usurped this Gift was Mr. Valentine Greatrackes, a gentleman of Ireland, who first practised his art of healing by the Touch in his own country; and afterwards came into England, where, at first, he obtained great reputation, which fell off by degrees, so that there was no occasion for any violent measures to prevent his intrenching on the Royal Prerogative.
This gentleman wrote an account of his several cures, in a Letter to the Honourable Robert Boyle, which was printed in 1668. Whether Mr. Boyle was a believer I know not; but it was at a time when the King practised, so that he might think it prudent to conceal his real sentiments.
How far imagination will operate in such cases, as the old women, even of this age, contend it does in Agues, is a question not for me to discuss; but it tempts me to transcribe the following story, as given by Mr. Granger, vol. IV. p. 32.
"I was myself a witness of the powerful workings of imagination in the populace, when the waters of Glastonbury were at the height of their reputation. The virtues of the spring there were supposed to be supernatural, and to have been discovered by a revelation made in a dream to one Matthew Chancellor. The people did not only expect to be cured of such distempers as were in their nature incurable, but even to recover their lost eyes, and their mutilated limbs. The following story, which scarce exceeds what I observed upon the spot, was told me by a gentleman of character. 'An old woman in the workhouse at Yeovil, who had long been a cripple, and made use of crutches, was strongly inclined to drink of the Glastonbury waters, which she was assured would cure her of her lameness. The master of the workhouse procured her several bottles of water, which had such an effect, that she soon laid aside one crutch, and not long after, the other. This was extolled, as a miraculous cure. But the man protested to his friends, that he had imposed upon her, and fetched the water from an ordinary spring.' I need not inform the Reader, that when the force of imagination had spent itself, she relapsed into her former infirmity."
FRENCH KINGS.
Whether the French Kings possessed this Gift in a greater or less degree than our own, I cannot decide; but in point of antiquity, by the accounts of their Historians, they exceed us by many centuries.
The advocates for the priority of the Kings of England in this wonderful Gift, tell you, that the French, seeing it with a jealous eye, invented a tale, and carried their claim up to Clovis, the first of that name in France, and their first Christian King, who acceded to the Throne A. D. 481; whereas we do not pretend to go higher than Edward the Confessor, who died in 1066.