that Charles II touched nearly one hundred thousand persons during his reign. In his record year, 1682, he performed the rite eight thousand five hundred times.
Evelyn gives the following account of the performance, which, as will be seen, was no light duty. He describes it thus:
"Sitting under his state in the Banqueting House, the chirurgeons cause the sick to be brought or led up to the throne, where, they kneeling, ye King strokes their faces and cheeks with both his hands at once, at which instant a chaplaine in his formalities says:—'He put his hands upon them and healed them.' This he said to every one in particular. When they have been all touched, they come up again in the same order; and the other chaplaine kneeling, and having an angel of gold strung on white ribbon on his arms delivers them one by one to His Majestie, who puts them about the necks of the touched as they passe, while the first chaplaine repeats 'That is ye true light which came into ye world.' Then follows an epistle (as at first a gospel) with the liturgy, prayers for the sick, with some alteration, and then the Lord Chamberlain and the Comptroller of the Household bring a basin, ewer, and towel, for his Majesty to wash."
In 1684 Thomas Rosewell, evidently an unrepentant Puritan, was tried before Judge Jeffries on a charge of high treason, the indictment alleging that he had said "the people made a flocking to the king upon pretence of being healed of the king's evil, which he could not do." Rosewell had further declared that he and others, being priests and prophets, could do as much as the king. And Rosewell had told how Jeroboam's hand had dried up when he would have seized the man of God who had prophesied against him, and how the king's
