Part 37

The superstition crystallised itself in the practice of the English and French kings of touching for the cure of scrofula, or king’s evil as the disease consequently came to be named. The term scrofula is itself one of the curiosities of etymology. Scrofula is the diminutive of scrota, a sow, and means a little pig. It is conjectured that the name was adopted from the idea of pigs burrowing under the surface of straw and likening to that the pig’s back sort of shape of the ulcers characteristic of the disease.

The first English king who undertook this treatment, so far as is known, was Edward the Confessor, who reigned from 1042 to 1066. But there is evidence that the French kings had practised it earlier. Robert the Pious (970-1031), son of Hughes Capet, is said to have exercised the miraculous power, and Church legend goes back five hundred years before this, attributing the origin of the gift to the date of the conversion of Clovis, A.D. 496. On that occasion the holy oil for the coronation of the Conqueror was brought direct from heaven in a phial carried by a dove, and the healing faculty was conferred at the same time. Most of the French kings down to Louis XV continued to touch, and it was even suggested that the practice should be resumed by Louis XVIII after the Restoration in 1815, but that monarch’s advisers prudently resolved that it would not do to risk the ridicule of modern France.

The records of Edward the Confessor’s miraculous feats of healing are obtained from William of Malmesbury, who wrote his Chronicles in the first half of the 12th century, about a hundred years after the Confessor’s reign. The earliest printed edition of the Chronicles appeared in 1577, and Shakespeare undoubtedly drew from it the description of the ceremony which is given in Macbeth (Act iv, Sc. 3). Malcolm and Macduff are represented as being in England “in a room of the King’s palace” (Edward the Confessor’s). The doctor tells them

There are a crew of wretched souls That stay his cure: their malady convinces The great assay of art; but at his touch-- Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand-- They presently amend.

Asked about the nature of the disease the doctor says “’Tis called the evil,” and he adds

How he solicits Heaven Himself best knows: but strangely visited people, All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures, Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, Put on with holy prayers: and ’tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction.

There is no evidence that any of the Norman kings performed the rite, but it is on record that Henry II performed cures by touching, and allusions to the practice by Edward II, Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV have been found in old manuscripts. It is probable, too, that the other kings preceding the Tudors followed the fashion when the interval between their wars gave them the necessary leisure. From Henry VII to Queen Anne all our rulers except Cromwell “touched.” Oliver, not being able to claim the virtue by reason of his descent, would certainly not have been trusted, and Dutch William had no sympathy with the superstition. It is recorded of him that once he yielded to importunity and went through the form of touching. “God gave thee better health and more sense” was the unsentimental benediction he pronounced. Queen Anne, as is well known, “touched” Dr. Johnson in his childhood, but it is recorded that in this case no cure was effected. Boswell says that Johnson’s mother in taking the child (who was then between two and three years old) to London for the ceremony was acting on the advice of Sir John Floyer, who was at that time a noted physician at Lichfield. The “touch-piece” presented by Queen Anne to Dr. Johnson is preserved in the British Museum. The Pretender, Charles Edward, touched someone at Holyrood House, Edinburgh, and his partisans said a cure was effected in three weeks. Which proved his right to the throne of England.

The story told by William of Malmesbury about Edward the Confessor is that “a young woman that had a husband about the same age as herself, but no child, was afflicted with overflowing of humours in her neck, which broke out in great nobbs, was commanded in a dream to apply to the King to wash it. To court she goes, and the King being at his Devotions all alone dip’d his fingers in water and dabbel’d the woman’s neck, and he had no sooner taken away his hand than she found herself better.” William goes on to tell that within a week she was well, and that within a year she was brought to bed of twins.

Modern doctors have forgotten and despised the strange story of this royal touch, but two and three centuries ago they very seriously discussed it. Reports of marvellous and numerous cures were confidently related, and the writers who had no faith in the virtue of the performance admitted the genuineness of many of the cases. Sergeant-Surgeon Dickens, Queen Anne’s surgeon, narrated the most curious instance. At the request of one young woman he brought her to the Queen to be touched. After the performance he impressed upon her the importance of never parting with the gold medal which was given to all patients; for it appears that he had reason to expect that she was likely to sell it. She promised always to retain it, and in due course she was cured. In time, thinking all risk had passed, she disposed of the touch-piece; the disease returned; she confessed her fault penitently to Dr. Dickens, and by his aid was touched again, and once more cured. Surgeon Wiseman, chief surgeon in Charles I’s army, and afterwards Sergeant-Surgeon in Charles II’s household, described the cures effected by that monarch. He had been an eye-witness of hundreds of cures, he says. Many other testimonies of the same kind might be quoted, but it is as well to remark that a habit grew up of describing the touching itself as a cure.

Careful and intelligent inquiries into the alleged success of the practice by investigators who were by no means believers in any actual royal virtue, but who yet admitted unhesitatingly the reality of many of the claimed cures, are on record. Among treatises of this character may be mentioned “A Free and Impartial Inquiry into the Antiquity and Efficacy of Touching for the King’s Evil,” by William Beckett, F.R.S., a well known surgeon, 1722, and “Criterion, or Miracles Examined,” by Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, 1754. Both of these writers admit that cures did result from the King’s touch; the Bishop says that he personally knew a man who had been healed. Mr. Beckett deals with these cures with much judgment. He points out how likely it was that the excitement of the visit to the court, both in anticipation and in realisation, and the impressive ceremony there conducted, would in many instances so affect the constitution, causing the blood to course through the veins more quickly, as to effect a cure.

Mr. Beckett also gives extremely good reasons for doubting whether Edward the Confessor ever did “touch” for scrofula. The gift is not mentioned in the Bull of Pope Alexander III by which the Confessor was canonised, nor by several earlier writers than William of Malmesbury, monks only too eager to glorify their benefactor.

Henry VII was the first to surround the ceremony of touching with an imposing religious service, and to give a touch-piece to the patient. Henry VIII does not seem to have followed the practice of his father to any great extent, and there was some disturbance about it in the next few reigns. The Catholics denied that Queen Elizabeth could possess the healing virtue, and when actual cures were cited to them one of their bishops declared that these were due, not to the royal virtue, but to the virtue of the sign of the cross. All the Stuart kings, Charles II particularly, exercised their hereditary powers most diligently. Macaulay states that Charles II touched nearly one hundred thousand persons during his reign. In his record year, 1682, he performed the rite eight thousand five hundred times.

Evelyn gives the following account of the performance, which, as will be seen, was no light duty. He describes it thus:

“Sitting under his state in the Banqueting House, the chirurgeons cause the sick to be brought or led up to the throne, where, they kneeling, ye King strokes their faces and cheeks with both his hands at once, at which instant a chaplaine in his formalities says:--‘He put his hands upon them and healed them.’ This he said to every one in particular. When they have been all touched, they come up again in the same order; and the other chaplaine kneeling, and having an angel of gold strung on white ribbon on his arms delivers them one by one to His Majestie, who puts them about the necks of the touched as they passe, while the first chaplaine repeats ‘That is ye true light which came into ye world.’ Then follows an epistle (as at first a gospel) with the liturgy, prayers for the sick, with some alteration, and then the Lord Chamberlain and the Comptroller of the Household bring a basin, ewer, and towel, for his Majesty to wash.”

In 1684 Thomas Rosewell, evidently an unrepentant Puritan, was tried before Judge Jeffries on a charge of high treason, the indictment alleging that he had said “the people made a flocking to the king upon pretence of being healed of the king’s evil, which he could not do.” Rosewell had further declared that he and others, being priests and prophets, could do as much as the king. And Rosewell had told how Jeroboam’s hand had dried up when he would have seized the man of God who had prophesied against him, and how the king’s hand had been restored on the prayer of the prophet. In his defence Rosewell had sneered at the Latin of the indictment, which spoke of the “Morbus Regni Anglici,” which, as he said, would mean the disease of the English kingdom, not the king’s evil. Jeffries, having taunted the prisoner and his witnesses with being “snivelling saints,” insisted on a verdict of guilty, and would no doubt have had the mocker’s ears cut off; but it is satisfactory to know that Charles II, who probably had not more faith in his healing power than the accused, ordered him to be pardoned.

The English prayer-book contained a form of service for this ceremony up to the year 1719.

Queen Anne was the last ruler in England to touch. There is no record of any of the Georges attempting the miracle, but the young Pretender, Charles Edward, when claiming to be Prince of Wales, touched a female child at Holyrood House in 1745, and is said to have effected a cure, and after his death in 1780 his brother, Cardinal York, still touched at Rome.

Louis XV was the last King of France who touched. Louis XIV fulfilled the duty on a larger scale, and doubtless with the utmost confidence in his royal virtue. The formula used by the kings of France when they had touched a patient was “Le roi te touche, Dieu te guerisse” (“The king touches thee; may God heal thee”). It is said that Henri of Navarre, when in the thick of the fight at Ivry (1590), as he laid about him with his sword right and left, gaily shouted this familiar expression.

CRAMP RINGS.

Faith in “cramp rings” corresponds in many respects with the reverential confidence in the royal touch as a cure for scrofula. The former, however, appears to have been of entirely English origin. Legend attributes the first cramp ring to Edward the Confessor.

St. Edward on his death-bed is alleged to have given a ring from his finger to the Abbot of Westminster with the explanation that it had been brought to him not long before by a pilgrim from Jerusalem to whom it had been given by a mysterious stranger, presumably a visitant from the world of spirits, who had bidden him give the ring to the king with the message that his end was near. The ring was preserved as a relic at Westminster for some time, and was found to possess miraculous efficacy for the cure of epilepsy and cramp. It was next heard of at Havering in Essex, the very name of which place, according to Camden, furnished evidence of the accuracy of the tradition. Havering was obviously a contraction of “have the ring.” So at least thought the old etymologists.

When the relic disappeared is not recorded; but the Tudor kings were in the habit of contributing a certain amount of gold and silver as an offering to the Cross every Good Friday, and the metal being made into rings was consecrated by them, in accordance with a form of service which was included in old English prayer books (see Burnett’s History of the Reformation, Part 2, Book 2, No. 25). This was actually used until the reign of Queen Anne. Andrew Boorde, in his “Breviary of Health,” 1557, says: “The kynges of England doth halow every yere cramp rynges ye which rynges worn on one’s finger doth helpe them whyche hath ye cramp.” They seem to have been regarded especially as a protection against epilepsy, and courtiers were much importuned to obtain some for persons afflicted.

The process of hallowing the rings is described in Brand’s “Popular Antiquities.” A crucifix was laid on a cushion in the royal chapel, and a piece of carpet was spread in front of it. The king entered in state, and when he came to the carpet crept on it to the crucifix. There the rings were brought to him in a silver dish, and he blessed them.

In the Harleian Manuscripts (295 f119) a letter is preserved dated the xxi. daie of June, 1518, from Lord Berners (the translator of Froissart), then ambassador to the Emperor Charles V. He writes from Saragoza “to my Lord Cardinall’s grace” (Wolsey), “If your grace remember me with some crampe rynges ye shall doo a thing muche looked for; and I trust to bestowe thaym well with Goddes grace, who evermor preserve and encrease your most reverent astate.”

It does not appear certain that the royal consecration of these rings was continued after the reign of Queen Mary; but cramp rings continued in esteem almost until our own time in some parts of the country. In Brand’s book, and in several numbers of Notes and Queries references to superstitions in connection with these, their production and the wearing of them particularly against epilepsy, are recorded. Sometimes, to be effective, the rings must have been made from coffin handles, or coffin nails, the coffins from which they have been taken having been buried; or rings of silver or gold, manufactured while the story of the Passion of the Saviour was being read, would possess curative power. So would a ring made from silver collected at a Communion service, preferably on Easter Sunday. In Berkshire, a ring made from five sixpences collected from five bachelors, none of whom must know the purpose of the collection, and formed by a bachelor smith into a ring was believed in; and in Suffolk, not very long since, nine bachelors contributed a crooked sixpence each to make a ring for a young woman in the village to wear for the cure of epileptic fits to which she was subject.

THE EARL OF WARWICK’S POWDER.

The Earl of Warwick’s Powder is named in many old English, and more frequently still in foreign dispensatories and pharmacopœias, appearing generally under the title of “Pulvis Comitis de Warwick, or Pulvis Warwiciensis,” sometimes also as “Pulvis Cornacchini.” It is the original of our Pulv. Scammon Co, and was given in the P.L. 1721 in its pristine form, thus:--

Scammony, prepared with the fumes of sulphur, 2 ounces. Diaphoretic antimony, 1 ounce. Cream of tartar, ½ ounce.