Feb. 22. 1851.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



149 



to his prosperity, but person ; so that during his 

 durance, he was fully free to exercise the same."* 



Cavendish, reh\ting what took place on Cardinal 

 Wolsey's embassy to Francis I., in 1527, has the 

 following passage : — 



" And at his [the king's] coming in to the bishop's 

 palace [at Amiens], where he intL'nded to dine with 

 my Lord Cardinal, there sat within a cloister about 

 two hundred persons diseased with the king's evil, 

 upon their knees. And the king, or ever he went to 

 dinner, provised every of them with rubbing them and 

 blessing them with his bare hands, being bareheaded all 

 the while; after whom followed his almoner distribut- 

 ing of money unto the persons diseased. And that 

 done, he said certain prayers over them, and then 

 washed his hands, and so came up into his chamber to 

 dinner, where as my lord dined with him."']' 



Lauventius, cited by Fuller in the page already 

 given, was, it seems, physician in ordinary to King 

 Henry IV. of France. In a treatise entitled De 

 Blirahili Strumarum Curaiione, be stated that 

 the kings of England never cured the evil. " To 

 cry quits with liim," Dr. W. Tucker, chaplain to 

 Queen Elizabeth, in his Chm'ismate, denied that 

 the kings of France ever originally cured the evil 



"but per aliquam propaginem, 'by a sprig of right,' de- 

 rived from the primitive power of our P^nglish kings, 

 under whose jurisdiction most of the French provinces 

 were once subjected," | 



Louis XVI., immediately after his coronation 

 at Rheims, in 1775, went to the Abbey of St. 

 Remi to pay his devotions, and to touch for the 

 evil. The ceremony took place in the Abbey 

 Park, and is thus deseribe<l in a paper entitled 

 Coronation of the Kmgs of France prior to the 

 Revolution, by Charles White, Esq. : — 



" Two thousand four hundred individuals suffering 

 under this affliction, having been assembled in rows in 

 the park, his majesty, attended by the household phy- 

 sicians, approached the first on the right. The phy- 

 sician -in-cliief then placed his hand upon the patient's 

 head, whilst a captain of the guards held the hands of 

 the latter joined before his bosom. The king, with 

 his head uncovered, then touched the patient by 

 making the sign of the cross upon his face, exclaiming, 

 'May God heal thee! The king touches thee.' The 

 whole two thousand four himdred having been healed 

 in a similar manner, and the grand almoner having 

 distributed alms to each in succession, three attendants, 

 called chefs de goblet, presented themselves with golden 

 salvers, on which were three embroidered napkins. 

 The first, steeped in vinegar, was then oflered to the 

 king by Monsieur ; the second, dipped in plain water, 

 was presented by the Count d'Artois ; and the third, 



• Fuller, Church History, edit. 18.37, i. 227. 

 f Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, edit. Singer, 1825, 

 vol. i. p. 101. 



\ Fuller, Church Hislort/, edit. 1837, i. pp. 227, 228. 



moistene<l with orange water, was handed by the Duke 

 of Orleans." * 



The power of the seventh son to heal the evil 

 (mentioned in the MS. I have cited) is humour- 

 ously alluded to in the Tatler (No. 11.). I sub- 

 join the passage, which occurs in a letter signed 

 "D. Distaff." 



" Tipstaff, being a seventh son, used to cure the 

 kiiig''s evil ; but his rascally descendants are so fur from 

 having that healing quality, that by a touch upon the 

 shoulder, they give a man such an ill habit of body, 

 that he can never come abroad afterwards." 



I imagine that by the seventh son is meant the 

 seventh son of a seventh son. C. II. Cooper. 



Cambridge, Feb. 4. 1851. 



P. S. Since the above was written, I Lave ob- 

 served the following notice of the work of Lauren- 

 tins in Southey's Common Place Booh, 4th Series, 

 478. (apparently from a bookseller's catalogue) : 



" Laurentius (And.) De Mirabili Strumas Sa- 

 nandi V'l. Solis Gallias Regibus Cliristianissimis divi- 

 nitas concessa, (fne copy,) 12s. Paris, 1609. 



" This copy possesses the large folded engraving of 

 Henry IV., assisted by his courtiers in the ceremony 

 of curing the king's evil." 



lUpIfc^ to i3Jli'n0r CSttErfcsf. 



Forged Papal Bulls (Vol. ii., p. 491.). — In your 

 Niimber, 20th Dec, J. E. inquires where is the in- 

 strument for counterfeiting the seal of the Pope's 

 Bulls, whicli was dredged up from the ruins of 

 old London Bridge. It is in my possession, and 

 your correspondent will find an account of it, with 

 woodcuts of the instrument itself and the seal, in 

 the Proceedings of the Archxological Association, 

 nth Feb. 1846. Geo. R. Corner. 



Eltham. 



Oheism. — As your correspondent T. H. (Vol. iil., 

 p. 59.) desires "any information" on the subject 

 of Oheism, in the absence of more and better, I 

 offer my mite : that in the early part of this cen- 

 tury it was very common among the slave-popula- 

 tion in the ^Vest Indies, especially on the remoter 

 estates — of course of African origin — not as either 

 a "religion" or a "rite," but rather as a super- 

 stition ; a power claimed by its professors, and 

 assented to by the patients, of causing good or evil 

 to, or averting it from them ; which was of course 

 always for a "consideration" of some sort, to the 

 profit, whether honorary, pecuniary, or other, of 

 the dispenser. It is by the pretended inlluence 

 of certain spells, charms, ceremonies, amulets worn, 

 or other such incantations, as practised with more 

 or less diversity by the adei)ts, the magicians and 

 conjurers, the " false prophets" of all ages and 

 countries. 



• New Monthly Magazine, vol. liii. p. 160. 



