Patrick enumerates among
the blessings that attend the reign of a just king "fine weather,
calm seas, crops abundant, and trees laden with fruit." On the other
hand, dearth, dryness of cows, blight of fruit, and scarcity of corn
were regarded as infallible proofs that the reigning king was bad.
Perhaps the last relic of such superstitions which lingered about
our English kings was the notion that they could heal scrofula by
their touch. The disease was accordingly known as the King's Evil.
Queen Elizabeth often exercised this miraculous gift of healing. On
Midsummer Day 1633, Charles the First cured a hundred patients at
one swoop in the chapel royal at Holyrood. But it was under his son
Charles the Second that the practice seems to have attained its
highest vogue. It is said that in the course of his reign Charles
the Second touched near a hundred thousand persons for scrofula. The
press to get near him was sometimes terrific. On one occasion six or
seven of those who came to be healed were trampled to death. The
cool-headed William the Third contemptuously refused to lend himself
to the hocuspocus; and when his palace was besieged by the usual
unsavoury crowd, he ordered them to be turned away with a dole.
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