CURE BY Y E TOUCH. 425 



could easily be cited, did space, need, and occasion offer. 

 They will be found recorded in several good books, published 

 mostly during the succeeding reign. 



The divine gift attained, if not its highest excellence, its 

 broadest expansion, in the reign of Charles II. True, this 

 king could not cure by mere prayer and benediction, as his 

 royal parent was wont to do ; true, the smoothing manipula- 

 tion was needed in his case; yet, when we remember that 

 the king stroked for the evil no fewer than ninety -two 

 thousand one hundred and seven in twenty years, being on 

 the average twelve per diem, all of whom, according to my 

 authorities, he cured, we must admit the virtue of cure by 

 stroking, as distinguished from cure by mere benediction, to 

 have attained its highest development. 



The history of cure by touch, in the middle and latter 

 part of the seventeenth century, would not be complete with- 

 out reference to cures performed, or said to have been per- 

 formed, by private individuals. In preceding reigns, the 

 impression had been very general that, in such cases as de- 

 monstrated the power of cure by manipulation, the result was 

 attributable in some measure to witchcraft. Thus the pre- 

 amble of a statute of Henry VIII., in 1511, sets forth, 'that 

 smiths, weavers, and women boldly and unaccustomally take 

 upon them great cares, in which they partly use sorcery and 

 witchcraft.' In the next century, however, and mostly in the 

 reign of Charles II., several private individuals, against whose 

 character no evil could be justly alleged, became conspicuous 

 under the name of ( strokers.' 



Of these the most renowned were Valentine Greatrakes 

 an Irish gentleman, Dr. Streper, and a gardener called Le- 

 verett. Of Greatrakes the lord bishop of Derry declared 

 that he had seen dimness cleared and deafness cured, pain 

 drawn out at some extreme part, grievous sores in a few days 

 healed, obstructions and stoppages removed, and cancerous 

 knots in breasts dissolved. It is easy to gather from perusal 



