the Queen dying on her birthday, February 11, 1502-3, the very day when she completed her thirty-seventh year.
Another delusion which excited an extensive and long-continued interest was alchemy, and in the splendid Courts of Almansor and Haroun-al-Raschid the professors of the mystic art found “patronage, disciples, and emolument.” Frederick II., in a letter to his friend Baron von de Horst, thus writes concerning the rage of making gold which has deceived so many: “Fredersdorf firmly believed in it, and was soon connected with all the adepts in Potsdam. Speedily the report spread through the whole garrison, so that there was not an ensign who did not hope to pay his debts by means of the philosopher’s stone. Swindling adepts crowded from all quarters, and under all sorts of characters, to Potsdam. From Saxony came a certain Madame von Pfuel with two very handsome daughters, who did the thing in quite a professional style, so that they were considered great prophetesses. I wished to put it down by authority, but I did not succeed. An offer was made to give in my presence every imaginable proof, so that I might convince myself with my own eyes. Considering this the best means to expose the folly, I made this lady alchemist perform her operations under my strict surveillance. To throw gold in the crucibles, or the like clumsy tricks, would not have done; yet Madame von Pfuel gave the affair such a specious appearance that I could not prove any of the experiments to have failed.” Indeed, the most eminent of the alchemic philosophers were not only the companions of princes, but many of them were even kings themselves, who “chose this royal road to wealth and magnificence.”
But in England the dreams of the alchemists never met with much favour, although there seems reason to believe that Raymond Lully—one of the most illustrious of the alchemists—visited this country about the year 1312, on the invitation of Edward II., and was employed here in refining gold and coining rose nobles. In 1455 Henry VI., by the advice of his council and parliament, issued four patents in succession to “certain knights, London citizens, chemists, monks, mass-priests, and others, with leave and licence to attempt the discovery of the philosopher’s stone, to the great benefit of the realm, and the enabling of the King to pay all the debts of the crown in real gold and silver.” Prynne afterwards satirically remarked upon the issue of this patent to ecclesiastics as well as laymen, that the King included them because they were “such good artists in transubstantiating bread and wine in the Eucharist, and therefore the more likely to be able to effect the transmutation of baser metals into better.”
Elizabeth amused herself with the chimeras of alchemy. Cecil, in his diary, has noted that in January 1567, “Cornelius Lannoy, a Dutchman, was committed to the Tower for abusing the Queen’s Majesty in promising to make the elixir.” This impostor had been permitted to have his laboratory at Somerset House, where he had deceived many by promising to convert any metal into gold. To the Queen a more flattering delusion had been held forth, even the draught of perpetual life and youth, and her strong intellect had been duped into the persuasion that it was in the power of a foreign empiric to confer the boon of immortality upon her. That Elizabeth was a believer in the occult sciences, and an encourager of those who practised the arts of divination and transmutation, is evident from the diary of her conjurer, Dr. Dee. On one occasion she condescended with her whole Court and Privy Council to visit him at Mortlake; but, as his wife had only been buried four hours, she contented herself with a peep into his magic mirror. Dr. Dee flattered Elizabeth with promises of perennial youth and beauty from his anticipated discovery of the elixir of life, and the prospect of unbounded wealth as soon as he had matured his secret of transmuting the baser metals into gold. But the encouragement given by Elizabeth to conjurers and star-gazers was inconsistent with her disbelief in the prevailing superstitions of the age.
Turning to sorcery and magic, Charlemagne, it is said, had a talisman, to which frequent allusion is made in traditional history, and which the late Emperor Napoleon III., when Prince Louis Napoleon, was stated to have in his possession. This curiosity, which was described in the Parisian journals as “la plus belle relique de l’Europe,” has long excited much interest in the archæological circles on the Continent. It is of fine gold, of a round form, set with gems, and in the centre are two sapphires, and a portion of the Holy Cross. This talisman was found on the neck of Charlemagne when his tomb was opened, and was presented to Bonaparte, and by him to Hortense, the former Queen of Holland, at whose death it descended to her son Prince Louis, late Emperor of the French.
Similarly, Henry VIII. had so great a superstitious veneration for the traditional virtues of a jewel which had for ages decked the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury, that he had it set in a ring, which he constantly wore on his thumb. The jewel was known as the “royal of France,” having been presented to the shrine of the murdered archbishop by Louis VII. in the year 1179. Indeed, amulets in one form or another have from early times been used by royalty; and we read in the old French chronicles how Gondebaud, King of Burgundy, in the fifth century sought as a talisman the aid of St. Sergius’s thumb—which, fastened to the right arm of a certain Eastern king, had always made him victorious—and how, when his request was not granted, he took by force a piece of the saint’s finger. And, likewise, on the death of Tippoo Saib, in the assault on his capital by the English troops, an English officer who was present at the discovery of his body among the slain, by permission of General Baird, took from the Sultan’s right arm the talisman which contained—sewed upon pieces of fine flowered silk—an amulet of a brittle, metallic substance of the colour of silver, and some magic words in Arabic and Persian characters. And, as a further instance of the superstitious tendency of Queen Elizabeth, Lady Southwell relates, “that the Queen, not being in very good health one day, Sir John Stanhope, Vice-Chamberlain, came and presented her Majesty with a piece of gold of the bigness of an angel, full of characters, which he said an old woman in Wales had bequeathed to her—the Queen—on her deathbed; and thereupon he discoursed how the said testatrix, by virtue of that piece of gold, had lived to the age of 120 years, and at that age, having all her body withered and consumed, she died, commanding the said piece of gold to be sent to her Majesty, alleging, further, that so long as she wore it on her body she could not die. The Queen, in confidence, took the gold and hung it round her neck.”
And it may be remembered how, after the battle of Culloden, the baggage of Prince Charles Edward fell into the hands of the Duke of Cumberland’s army, when many private and curious articles came into the possession of General Bedford—amongst others a stone set in silver attached to a ring which, it has been suggested, “the superstitious prince may have obtained on the Continent as a charm, and carried as a protection in the hazardous enterprise in which he was engaged.” It was a ruby bloodstone, having on one face the figure of Mars, and on the other face was a female naked figure, probably Isis.[174]
And speaking of ring superstitions in connection with royalty, there were the famous “cramp rings” which, when blessed by the sovereign, were regarded as preservatives against the cramp or against epilepsy—the earliest mention of which usage occurs in the reign of Edward II., the ceremonial having been discontinued by Edward VI. These rings were of various kinds—sometimes they were made of silver and of gold; and a MS. copy of the Orders of the King of England’s Household—13th Henry VIII., 1521-1522—preserved in the National Library at Paris, contains “the Order of the Kinges of England, touching his coming to service, hallowing of cramp rings, and offering and creeping to the Cross.”[175] On April 4, 1529, Anne Boleyn sent to Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who had been despatched to Rome to plead for the divorce of Catherine of Aragon, a present of cramp rings; and the late Cardinal Wiseman had in his possession a manuscript containing both the ceremony for the blessing of the cramp rings, and that for the touching for the king’s evil. At the commencement of the MS. are emblazoned the arms of Philip and Mary, and there is an illumination representing the Queen kneeling, with a dish containing the rings to be blessed on each side of her. It appears that Queen Mary intended to revive the practice, and from this manuscript she probably did so.
Closely allied with the “royal cramp rings” was the practice of “touching for the evil,” which is said to have commenced with Edward the Confessor, and was more or less continued to the reign of Queen Anne, for in Lent 1712 we find Dr. Johnson among the persons actually touched. The custom seems to have been at its height in the reign of Charles II., as in the four first years of his restoration he “touched” nearly 24,000 persons. Pepys, in his “Diary,” under June 23, 1666, records how he waited at Whitehall, “to see the King touch people for the king’s evil.” He did not come, but kept the poor persons waiting all the morning in the rain in the garden; but afterwards he touched them in the banqueting-house. And Evelyn records the fact that in the reign of Charles II. several persons were pressed to death in the crowd that surrounded the doors of the Court surgeon, where individuals applied for tickets in order to present their children for cure to the King. William III., says Macaulay, “had too much sense to be duped, and too much honesty to bear a part in what he knew to be an imposture.” “It is a silly superstition,” he exclaimed, when he heard that at the close of Lent his palace was besieged by a crowd of the sick; “give the poor creatures some money and send them away.” On one occasion he was importuned into laying his hand on a patient. “God give you better health,” he said, “and more sense.” But Queen Anne revived the superstition, and performed the healing-office during her progresses whenever she rested at any provincial city.
At a late period the use of certain coins, known as “royal touch-pieces,” was in common vogue, which, being touched by the King, were supposed to ward off evil or scrofula, several of which are preserved in the British Museum; and Mrs. Bray speaks of a “Queen Anne’s farthing” being a charm for curing the king’s evil in Devonshire.