The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Monday 13 December 2004

The King's Evil

In 1712, the scrofulous two-year-old son of a Staffordshire bookseller was brought to London for presentation to Queen Anne. On seeing the diseased child and the swollen and leaking sores on his neck, the Queen – resplendent in glittering diamonds and a long black hood – leaned down and carefully stroked the boy’s cheeks and throat with her bare hands before presenting him with a special gold coin, or touchpiece. The boy and his family returned to Staffordshire, no doubt anticipating the boy’s miraculous return to health thanks to the Queen’s divine touch.

In spite of temporary partial blindness and permanent scars left on his face by the scrofula that plagued his childhood, Dr. Samuel Johnson wore the touchpiece given to him by the Queen for the rest of his life. Despite Anne’s failure to cure Dr. Johnson, many contemporaries claimed that she and other monarchs in France and England did in fact have the power to heal, simply by touch.

Although the concept has long had much broader religious and spiritual connotations as the “laying on of hands” – a philosophy the early Christian’s based on ancient Jewish beliefs, it first extended to European monarchs in 11th century France, with England following shortly thereafter. As always, however, there was a little matter of one-upsmanship between the two countries, with each claiming they were the first to possess healing powers. French legend perpetuated that Clovis (d. 511), founder of the French kingdom, was the first to employ the “Divine Touch” (also known as the “King’s Touch” or “Royal Touch”), solidly routing the English, who claimed Edward the Confessor (d. 1066) was the first in that country. The truth of the matter is that France’s Robert II the Pious (d. 1031) was really the first – undoubtedly a win for the French, but only by a hair.

In any case, both countries seemed to have justified the continuation of the power in successive monarchs in the same way – divine right as a legitimate French or English monarch descended from either Robert the Pious or Edward the Confessor, and anointment with pure chrism (holy oil consecrated by a bishop), rather than plain old sacred oil. Backed by these credentials – not to mention the Roman Catholic Church – the belief was perpetuated, almost unbroken, into the 18th and 19th centuries.

But the tradition did not go unchanged. Initially, the power to heal was applied to most all diseases, but was eventually applied primarily to scrofula – a form of tuberculosis that affects lymph nodes in the neck. Because of the application of the King’s Touch to this particular affliction, the disease became known as “le mal du roi” or “The King’s Evil.” The ceremony of “Touching for the King’s Evil” also changed over the years and varied between the two countries. In both countries, however, the monarch often performed the act at large ceremonies on important holy days. On Easter, 1686, for instance, Louis XIV of France is said to have touched 1,600 people at a ceremony at Versailles, repeating the words “The King toucheth thee; the Lord healteth thee,” with each person. Not to be outdone, in England, Charles II, reportedly touched between 90,000 and 100,000 or more people during his reign. And, no, those figures do not include attractive women. At this point in English history, the demand for the King’s Touch was so high that special application certificates were established as a prerequisite to participation.

Perhaps like many aspects of Charles II’s reign, his ability to perform with enthusiasm so many traditional rituals of the monarchy was directly tied to the need to reinspire a sense of awe for the monarchy, which had been lost in the Civil War and during the Republic. Ironically, it was Charles’ grandfather and the first Stuart monarch of England, James I, who first tried to put an end to the custom, calling it superstitious. He was not fully successful, but he sparked off years of waxing and waning popularity of the tradition in England, which finally ended once and for all with the last of the Stuart monarchs, Queen Anne, in 1714. In between, William III was just one of those who waned. Like James I, he considered the practice superstitious and refused to perform the act, with one unique exception. Perhaps under pressure, the King reportedly touched an afflicted person and said, “God give you better health and more sense.”

As for his successor, Queen Anne, she seems to have taken on the responsibility with incredible conviction, although her success was both touted and questioned. While contemporary surgeons, not to mention newly healthy subjects, claimed the Queen’s touch was efficacious, others regarded that her questionable legitimacy as Queen also put her healing powers in doubt. By the same argument, the exiled Stuart’s – both the Old Pretender and the Young Pretender – continued to perform the act for a great many petitioners. In fact, word has it that the unbelieving William III even referred petitioners he turned away to his vanquished rivals.

After Queen Anne’s death and the discontinuation of the Royal Touch by the Hanoverian monarchs in Britain, the practice continued in earnest in France. As in England, however, the Revolution brought the practice to a halt, only to have it reinstated in 1815 for the practical reason of “strengthening the monarchy, if not of healing the sick.” Clearly, it did neither, and Charles X performed the last ceremony in France on May 31st, 1825.

The disappearance of touching for the king’s evil was probably just as much a result of an increasing understanding of science and medicine as it was of the decreasing God-like reverence of monarchs. But, even today, it would be silly to completely disregard the idea of the healing power of royalty. Scientifically, of course, there’s little reason to believe that the touch of any person can actually heal an illness, but modern royals have proven over the years that a simple touch can not only change the life of a person with a terrible disease or affliction, but can also change the attitudes of those who are healthy.

Diana is most frequently credited with having applied this “healing touch” to patients with HIV and AIDS – bringing hope to their lives and understanding about the nature of the illness to the public at large, but other royals have done the same for equally worthy causes. In 1956, for example, Queen Elizabeth II broke convention when she shook hands with patients at a leper colony in Nigeria. Her touch may not have healed those people of their affliction, but, in a far less ceremonious and more personal way, she did exactly what English and French monarchs had been doing since the 11th century – momentarily closed the gap between the fortunate and the unfortunate.

Until next week, 

- Tori Van Orden Mart�nez 

P.S. For more information on this subject, I suggest Marc Bloch’s book, “The Royal Touch: Monarchy and Miracles in France and England.”