king's evil

   An old term for scrofula. Kings of England and France claimed to heal it by their touch - a gift conferred by God through the oil used at their coronation. The first English ruler to 'touch for the evil' was Edward the Confessor; several Plantagenets did so, and especially the Tudors and Stuarts, including the Queens Regnant - Mary, Elizabeth, and Anne. In a religious ceremony devised by Henry VII, the sovereign would stroke the sufferer's neck, first with the hand and then with a gold coin; this coin was to be worn as a pendant till the cure was complete. To prevent abuse, those asking to be healed had to bring certificates from their parishes that they really were sick and had not been previously touched by the monarch.

   The Stuarts regarded the power as intrinsic to their sacred kingship; Charles II is known to have touched 90,798 sufferers. The Hanoverians refused to do any touching, but the ritual remained in the Book of Common Prayer till 1744; the exiled Stuarts continued to do so on the Continent. Until late in the 18th century scrofulaics visited the bloodstained shirt worn by Charles I on the scaffold and preserved at Ashburnham (Sussex), in hope of a cure.

   Alternative popular cures were the touch of a 'seventh son or a 'blacksmith, or a 'toad's leg in a silk bag round one's neck. Reginald Scot said one might also touch the place with the hand of someone that died an untimely death, or get a naked virgin to lay her hand on it, fasting, and spit on it three times ((1584): book 12, chapter 14).

   ■ Thomas, 1971: 192-8; Raymond Crawfurd, The King's Evil (1911); Marcel Bloch, Les Rois Thaumaturges (1925), reprinted 1961.