conferred at the same time. Most of the French kings down to Louis XV continued to touch, and it was even suggested that the practice should be resumed by Louis XVIII after the Restoration in 1815, but that monarch's advisers prudently resolved that it would not do to risk the ridicule of modern France.
The records of Edward the Confessor's miraculous feats of healing are obtained from William of Malmesbury, who wrote his Chronicles in the first half of the 12th century, about a hundred years after the Confessor's reign. The earliest printed edition of the Chronicles appeared in 1577, and Shakespeare undoubtedly drew from it the description of the ceremony which is given in Macbeth (Act iv, Sc. 3). Malcolm and Macduff are represented as being in England "in a room of the King's palace" (Edward the Confessor's). The doctor tells them
There are a crew of wretched souls
That stay his cure: their malady convinces
The great assay of art; but at his touch—
Such sancity hath heaven given his hand—
They presently amend.
Asked about the nature of the disease the doctor says "'Tis called the evil," and he adds
How he solicits Heaven
Himself best knows: but strangely visited people,
All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despair of surgery, he cures,
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken,
To the succeeding royalty he leaves
The healing benediction.
There is no evidence that any of the Norman kings performed the rite, but it is on record that Henry II performed cures by touching, and allusions to the
