79 
On the Cure by Touch ; with Notes on some Cases in Somerset. 
By EMANUEL GREEN. 
(Read January 10th, 1883.) 
The general history of the cure of scrofwla by the royal touch 
has been often noticed, but, as a local subject, from the rarity of 
recorded cases, it is still almost new ground. 
The origin of the custom may fairly be seen in the common 
tendency to deify a king ; in the early use of imposition of hands 
for mystical purposes ; and particularly from the inability of the 
_ medicine man to ease these—Strange people 
All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, 
The mere despair of surgery. 
Although the practice can be traced in very early times, our 
Eadward the Confessor was the first who in England thus used 
“the sanctity that heaven had given his hand.” Petrus 
Blessensis, an Archdeacon of Bath, mentions about 1180 that 
_ Henry II. touched, and we must assume that the custom con- 
tinued ; but it is not until the time of Henry VII. that any other 
_ direct evidence is met with, and this is from the form of prayer 
then used by the priest having been preserved. The notion of 
this cure, says Oldmixon, was kept up after the Reformation by 
those of the priesthood who were for returning to Popery, as 
under it they were in possession of miracles, of exorcising, of 
absolution, &c., very beneficial to them in profit and credit. 
__ Elizabeth was very successful with her cures, a surgeon of the time 
declaring her “the only day star, peerless and without comparison, 
. whose sacred and blessed hands would presage a divine and holy 
curation” He then prays that she may for ever reign (if it please 
? Lord God), even to the end of the world. The Papists later, 
the time of Charles I., through Richard Smith, titular Bishop 
Calcedon and bishop of this Western District, declared this 
success due to the sign of the cross used, and not to any power 
n the Queen. This point had arisen before, the practice being 
