Part 36

But there is further the evidence of the actual existence of Queen Mary’s Illuminated MS. Manual, in the Library of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster, giving the Office of the Blessing of Cramp-rings in Latin, with rubrics in English showing it to be the form made use of by herself. It also contains a miniature painting of Queen Mary performing the service of consecration. The whole office is transcribed below. A full description of the Manual will be found in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, at a meeting of whom it was shown and described by Sir Henry Ellis. Sparrow Simpson has also described it in the Journal of the Archaeological Association, 1871. It is a ‘small quarto volume, eight and a half inches in height by six and three-eighths in width’. Cardinal Wiseman, to whom it formerly belonged, has written on the fly-leaf, ‘Queen Mary’s manual for blessing cramp-rings and touching for the Evil. Bound 1850.’ The cover is spangled with roses and fleurs-de-lis, together with the Queen’s monogram MR. ‘The volume consists of nineteen leaves of vellum, each surrounded with a rich border, and filled either with miniatures or with the two offices which it comprises. Then follow four ruled leaves and fifteen plain leaves without manuscript.... On the recto of leaf 1 the royal arms of Philip and Mary are emblazoned, surrounded by a garter and surmounted by a crown. A rich border containing the rose, the fleur-de-lis, and the pomegranate, together with a shield bearing the cross of St. George, completes the decorations of the page.’ The red and white roses represent Queen Mary’s double title to the throne of England as the heiress of the houses of Lancaster and York, the fleur-de-lis her claim to the throne of France, and the pomegranate of Granada her descent from Ferdinand and Isabella. The Cross of St. George is derived from the shield of the Order of the Garter. ‘On the verso of this leaf is an illumination (Plate XL) representing the interior of a chapel with an altar furnished with curtains, candlesticks, and crucifix. At a prayer-desk before the altar kneels the Queen; before her is an open book, and on either side two golden basins containing cramp-rings.’ Leaves 2 to 10 contain ‘certayn prayo’s to be vsed by the quenes heighnes in the consecration of the crampe ryngs’. A study of the rubrics, which are in English, suffices ‘to show the essentials for the consecration of the rings: the prayers, the royal touch, the holy water.... The recto of leaf 11 is filled with an illumination of the Crucifixion with St. Mary and St. John. In the border are the instruments of the Passion--the spear, the reed and sponge, the hammer and pincers, three nails, two scourges, and (a very unusual addition) a centre-bit of the same form as that now in use. On the verso of this leaf is a very interesting full-page illumination. At a prayer-desk, on which is an open book, kneels the Queen, turning to the right (the dexter side of the picture), wearing the head-dress familiar to us in all her portraits. Before her kneels a sufferer, apparently a young man, whose bare and swollen neck the Queen holds between her two hands. Behind him, holding open the collar of the patient’s coat, kneels the “clarke of the closett” in a cassock and gown, and with a tonsured head. On the left of the prayer-desk stands “the chaplen”, a bald-headed, venerable man in a long cassock, a somewhat short surplice with full sleeves, and the “stole abowte his neck” ordered in the rubric, reading the appointed office. The Queen wears a brown dress cut square at the neck, white sleeves, and a lace ruff and waist-bands. The office for the healing follows, commencing on folio 12a, and ending on folio 19a.

‘The rubrics are in red ink, bright and fresh; and each page has a rich border of scrolls, leaves, flowers, and fruit, with occasional figures of children, &c. I enumerate the most important subjects. Folio 1b, David with head of Goliath, St. George and the Dragon, and a child with a skull; folio 2b, arms of the city of London; folio 3a, VERITAS TEMPORIS FILIA (the Queen’s favourite motto), with a sword and sceptre; folios 3b and 4a, large terminal figures with grapes; folio 4a, arms of France and England quarterly; folio 4b, D̅NS MIHI ADIVTOR; folios 5a and b, portcullis and rose; folios 6a and b, PACIENTIA and PRVDĒTIA, with allegorical figures; folios 7a and b, CHARITAS and IVSTICIA; folios 8a and b, FIDES and SPES; folios 9a and b, FORTITVDO and TEMPERANCIA.’

With the death of Mary, the ceremonial seems finally to have fallen into disuse. There is, however, a passage in the Historia Anglicana Ecclesiastica of Nicholas Harpsfield, which was written entirely in the reign of Elizabeth, which seems to throw some doubt on the point. The words are as follows:

‘Quin et annulus ille, de quo diximus, magna in Westmonasteriensi Londini coenobio postea reverentia reservatus, adversus comitialem morbum multis profuit: indeque etiam ortum, ut ad sacram parasceuen Reges Angliae certos annulos statis quibusdam precibus et caerimoniis consecrare consueverint, adversus eundem morbum salutares. Quae consuetudo et ad nostra usque tempora perducta est, multique huiusmodi annulorum beneficium, nostra etiam aetate, senserunt.’ [And further the above-mentioned ring was reverently preserved afterwards in the monastery of Westminster in London, and relieved many of epilepsy. That too was the origin of the custom of the Kings of England on Good Friday consecrating certain rings with set prayers and ceremonies, for the cure of the same disease. Which custom has persisted even down to our own times, and many even in our own lifetimes have derived benefit from rings of this kind.]

Nicholas Harpsfield, though he did not write till the reign of Elizabeth, was born as early as A.D. 1519, so that his words are consistent with discontinuance of the ceremony after the time of Queen Mary.

It remains to consider what diseased states were embraced by the term ‘cramp’. Epilepsy, convulsions, and rheumatism certainly. All these terms have in common the idea of muscular contraction or spasm, and their relation in usage to one another may be represented graphically as under:

Convulsion \ Cramp ═ Rheumatism. / Epilepsy

Confusion of these terms is far more marked in medical than in lay writers; but at the same time there is little doubt that the conservative sentiment inspired by the royal ceremonial kept the term ‘cramp’ alive in a sense that was all but obsolete in the common diction.

Chaucer applies ‘crampe’ to muscular spasm:

But wel he felte about his herte crepe ... The crampe of death, to streyne him by the herte.

Linacre, as we have seen, speaks of cramp-rings, in 1518, as a charm against spasms, while about the same year Polydore Vergil speaks of the royal cramp-rings as a cure for the morbus comitialis. Each of these two writers clearly indicates epilepsy. In 1526 Magnus speaks definitely of cramp-rings as relieving a man lying in the falling-sickness, a term habitually applied to epilepsy. Nicholas Harpsfield too, writing in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, speaks of cramp-rings blessed by the kings as remedies for the morbus comitialis. In all probability royal cramp-rings were used for epilepsy and epilepsy only, but it is quite possible, and I am inclined to think probable, that other cramp-rings had a less exclusive use.

Bacon’s description of cramp in his Natural and Experimental History is fairly explicit and obviously does not embrace epilepsy: ‘The cramp cometh of contraction of sinews, which is manifest, in that it comes either by cold or dryness.’

Shakespeare recognizes both epilepsy and rheumatism as entities apart from cramp. Epilepsy he seems to associate more with falling than with convulsion: thus, of the fit that attacked Caesar when the crown was offered to him, he writes:

Casca. He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at mouth, and was speechless.

Brutus. ‘Tis very like: he hath the falling-sickness.

‘Cramp’ is used by Shakespeare for muscular spasms or contractures, and he links the term on the one side to rheumatism, and on the other to convulsions, in the following passages:

For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps, Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up.

Parolles says:

‘In a retreat he outruns any lackey: marry, in coming on he has the cramp.’

Prospero says:

Go, charge my goblins that they grind their joints With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews With aged cramps.

and

‘Leander ... went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont, and being taken with the cramp was drowned.’

Robert Bayford, in his Enchiridion Medicum published in 1655, includes both wry-neck and convulsions under the heading cramp, but he treats epilepsy separately on the ground that, as we know to be the case, it is not always associated with convulsions. He has no word ‘rheumatism’ at all.

Pepys (1664) carried about with him a hare’s foot as a charm against colic, i.e. against muscular spasm. Among Indians, Norwegians, and Central Africans, the foot of an elk was a charm against epilepsy. Pepys also recites a charm against cramp:

Cramp, be thou faintless As our Lady was sinless When she bare Jesus.

In this charm the word cramp seems to refer to the painful muscular spasms of labour. Pepys, as we know, suffered from colic, but not from epilepsy, so in using a hare’s foot as a charm against colic he was probably employing a charm against epilepsy. In like manner the ‘rheumatic ring’ of to-day seems to be the lineal descendant of the cramp-ring of aforetime, and the confusion of nomenclature has doubtless not affected its efficacy. Folk-medicine serves rather to confirm than to elucidate the confusion, for in Suffolk moles’ feet are carried as a charm against rheumatism, but in Sussex against cramp. In Devonshire a dried frog is worn as a cure for fits.

Boswell, in his description of Johnson at the time of their tour to the Hebrides, uses the word ‘cramp’ in its earlier significance. ‘His head,’ he says, ‘and sometimes also his body, shook with a kind of motion like the effect of a palsy: he appeared to be frequently disturbed by cramps, or convulsive contractions, of the nature of that distemper called St. Vitus’s dance.’