March 30, 1712. In his case at least the touch was inefficacious, for
he was subject to scrofula all his life. Boswell says:[177] "His
mother, yielding to the superstitious notion, which, it is wonderful
to think, prevailed so long in this country, as to the virtue of the
royal touch; a notion which our kings encouraged, and to which a man
of such inquiry and such judgment as Carte could give credit, carried
him to London, where he was actually touched by Queen Anne. Mrs.
Johnson, indeed, as Mr. Hector informed me, acted by the advice of the
celebrated Sir John Floyer, then a physician in Litchfield." At this
time few persons but Jacobites believed in king's touch as a miracle.
Dr. Daniel Turner, though, relates that several cases of scrofula
which had been unsuccessfully treated by himself and Dr. Charles
Bernard, sergeant-surgeon to her majesty, yielded afterwards to the
efficacy of the queen's touch.

During the reign of Anne the sceptics outnumbered the believers and at
her death the practice was discontinued. Among the unbelievers was the
above-mentioned Dr. Charles Bernard, an account of whose conversion is
given by Oldmixon as follows: "Yesterday the queen was graciously
pleased to touch for the King's evil some particular persons in
private; and three weeks after, December 19, yesterday, about twelve
at noon her majesty was pleased to touch, at St. James', about twenty
persons afflicted with the King's evil. The more ludicrous sort of
skeptics, in this case, asked why it was not called the queen's evil,
as the chief court of justice was called the Queen's Bench. But
Charles Bernard, the surgeon who had made this touching the subject of
his raillery all his lifetime till he became body surgeon at court,
and found it a good perquisite, solved all difficulties by telling his
companions with a fleer '_Really one could not have thought it, if one
had not seen it_.' A friend of mine heard him say it, and knew well
his opinion of it."[178]

In 1745 there was an attempted revival of the practice when Prince
Charles Edward exercised this prerogative of royalty.

Henry VII was the first monarch to establish a particular ceremony to
be observed at the healings. He probably derived this from an old form
of exorcism used for the dispossessing of evil spirits. This was
altered at various times but may still be found in the prayer-book of
the reign of Queen Anne. Indeed, it was not until some time after the
accession of Geo