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    branch of the royal prerogative , began in this kingdom with , or in the person of Edward the Confessor . * Some however seem to think it to have existed in France at an

    earlier period : if so , Edward , who had long lived in that country , and appeared very partial to it , and fond of French fashions , might take the hint from thence ,

    and introduce it here upon his accession to the throne , which he might easily manage by the help of the monks , with whom he was so great n favourite .

    CloviS ) and Robert of sainted memory , are named among the early French sovereigns who successfully practiced the royal touch , and were greatly admired and venerated by their subjects on that

    account . In the Feign of Philip the first , the virtue is supposed to have been somehow lost , but happily revived again with undiminished splendour in that of Lewis the Fat , after which it seems to

    have long and regularly continued . Francis I . f and Henry IV . are represented as eminent practitioners ; how it was with the succeeding

    monarchs , descended from the latter , we are not informed . No particular attention appears to have been paid to it yet by the emperor Napoleon . What he

    * " Ailred as well as Malmslury observes , that the Confessor cured a young married woman , reduced by the evil t © a deplorable condition , by stroking the place affected -with his hand ; upon which she grew sensibly better , the humour dispersed , the scar

    wore off , and in a week ' s time the cure was perfected ! !!"—Carte ] , 357 , f That Francis touched for the evil is said to be averred by Servetus , in his 1 st edition of Ptolemy's Geography . Of its success , indeed , we are told that he appeared far from being a believer .

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    may think proper to do hereafter , no tongue can tell . Whether he possesses this power or not , it is certain that he possesses some other powers in as great a degree , at least , as any of his royal or imperial predecessors .

    & m . But this miraculous gift of healing did not , it seems , belong exclusively to the kings of France and England * . The earls , or princes of the house of Hapsburg also , are reported to have had it in no scanty measure . They cured the strumousj or scrofulous , it is said , by giving them drink , and the stammerers by kissing them . But the kings of Hungary seem to have exceeded all ; for we are told that they could cure , not only the

    king ' s evil , but all disorders occasioned by poison , the bite of a viper , or any other venemous animal . " Mr . Bel , who tells us this , observes ( what is as

    remarkable as the account itself ) that he cannot find in history , that these Hungarian kings ever exercised this wonderful power /' -f" More shame for them , the unfeeling wretches ! if they possessed it .

    " The case was otherwise with the royal doctors of France and England , who have not been so shy of exerting this power , or

    * Nor does it appear that it belonged exclusively to certain Christian potentates ; for long before there were any

    such , it had been ascribed to the pagan emperors , Vespasian and Hadrian , who are said by their touch , to have restored sight to the blind ; and the fact seems as well established as any of the accounts of cures effected by the touch of our Christian and English monarchs .

    -f * See Occasional Thoughts on the Power of curing the king ' evil , ascribed to the kings of England——super added to Werenfel's Disertation upon superstition in natural things . Load . 174 s .

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    6 Richards * s History of the Royal Touch .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1813, page 6, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2424/page/6/