CUEE BY Y E TOUCH. 427 



to be when Christ had suffered, and as the substance being 

 come so the shadow goes away, and there is no reason to 

 expect a sign when y e thing signified thereby is now come ; 

 I conclude that our royal sovereign will be the last of the 

 kings of this nation to whom God will give the gift of healing 

 the king's evil.' I need not point out the fallacy of this sur- 

 mise; cure by royal touch having been publicly used down 

 to the reign of George III. 



Having now treated as fully as space permits this blessed 

 gift, c vouchsafed solely to the kings, by grace of God, of 

 Great Britain and France, and denied to other Christian 

 kings,'* it may not be amiss to reproduce a few of the dispar- 

 aging and venomous cavillings that certain evil-disposed per- 

 sons have used, to cast doubt and ridicule on the royal gift. 



.The circumstance cannot fail to be noticed, they argue, 

 that just in proportion as the title to the crown was weak 

 or uncertain, or that a belief in the divinity of kingcraft had 

 need of extraneous support ; then, ostentatiously, and, as it 

 might seem, perversely, the sovereign power to cure by touch, 

 and stroking was vaunted to the highest. Then, they say, 

 the legitimacy of Henry VH. was none of the best, yet he 

 dispensed the healing aura from his fingers' ends with the 

 freedom of a spendthrift and the efficacy of a saint. Then 

 consider the reign of Henry VIOL, they say. In his time, 

 doubts having arisen as to the power of that monarch to cure 

 after the fashion of his predecessors, because of the Pope's 

 anathema; the doubt was set at rest by the monarch's not 

 only stroking for the evil with effect, but curing cramp as 

 well. Then these evil-disposed critics urge, that so long as 

 British kings and queens remained on good terms with Rome, 

 the pretence or reality of curing by manipulation met with 

 no sort of opposition by the clergy, nor were the grounds 

 upon which the claim was based scrutinised over-rigidly. 



* Clowes. N.B. Our author means kings and queens. He was Eliza- 

 beth's own surgeon, and frequently testifies to her Majesty's healing virtues. 



