"Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice Nodus;"
and, if ever necessary, it was on this occasion; though the King lived but one year afterwards; and Cheke survived, to disgrace the Protestant Religion by his revolt.
QUEEN ELIZABETH.
That the Queen touched, is acknowledged; but it is as evident that she had no high opinion of the efficacy of such operation; for she once threw out an expression tending much to disparage the validity of it. Being on a Progress in Gloucestershire, her Majesty was so pestered with applications from diseased people, who pressed about her person in hopes of obtaining the Royal Touch, that she unguardedly, and in an ill-humour, exclaimed, "Alas, poor people, I cannot, I cannot cure you; it is God alone who can do it." This was interpreted by some, as a renunciation of the Gift; but, nevertheless, the Queen afterwards admitted a general resort to her for the purpose of being touched, and one in particular was healed[203]. On this, or some other occasion, a rigid Papist was under a necessity of applying for the Queen's Touch, after having tried every other means in vain; and was, says my Author, perfectly healed. This happening soon after the Pope had denounced the sentence of Excommunication against her Majesty, raised the reputation of this Gift in the Royal Line of England; seeing that the Pope had no power to divest the Queen of it[204].
The Queen, at another time, A. D. 1575, being on a Progress in Warwickshire, where she was entertained by the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth Castle, during her abode there, "touched nine for the King's Evil[205]."
JAMES I.
It does not appear that the Kings of Scotland ever pretended to this Gift; but when their James VI. came to the Throne of England, the virtue appeared in him; and he exercised it, as is evident from a passage in Macbeth[206], and still more strongly from Proclamations in this Reign, still extant[207].
Being lineally descended from Henry the Seventh's Daughter, Margaret, this King had the same title to the Gift as Henry himself, who, as has been seen, used it, though descended from a line of Usurpers.