Monday 3 November 2014

THE KING'S EVIL, by Y S Lee


Hello, HG readers. I’ve been reading Liza Picard’s juicy social history of Restoration London. It is GRIPPING! Until now, I had only a hazy overview of the period, acquired during an undergraduate course on Restoration and Eighteenth Century literature. I loved the course but apart from a few gossipy snippets about Aphra Behn and the Earl of Rochester, I’d shed most of the details.

So when I ran across the phrase “the King’s Evil” in Picard’s book, I tripped over it. The what? “The King’s Evil” is another name for scrofula, a swelling of the lymph nodes in the neck. It’s often associated with tuberculosis. Apparently, the swelling itself is not painful but it is disfiguring and is further associated with fever, chills, and weight loss. 

image via wikipedia

That’s interesting enough, but what has it to do with the king? Apparently, in both France and England, monarchs held ceremonies in which they laid healing hands on those suffering from scrofula. This was called “the royal touch”. It was both a demonstration of their paternal care for the people and an affirmation of their divine right to rule. The ceremonies included prayer and sometimes the gift of a gold coin or ribbon to the sufferer, a talisman of the king’s power.

Here’s an image of Charles II, England’s most enthusiastic practitioner of the royal touch. (This makes perfect sense: Charles II had a lot to prove, as a freshly restored king.) According to Picard, he held weekly ceremonies, kept up the practice when he travelled outside London, and touched about 4500 petitioners in each year of his reign!

Charles II, administering the royal touch

The last English monarch to practise the royal touch was Queen Anne. Her most famous “patient” was the young Samuel Johnson, who contracted scrofula as an infant. His family took him to St James’s Palace in March 1712, when he was two years old. Queen Anne took her healing duty seriously, usually fasting the day before the ceremony. 

Queen Anne, "healing" a subject. Edited: as Leslie Wilson observes in the comments, this can't possibly be Anne unless she's wearing fancy dress. It's Mary I. Apologies!

Predictably (to us), Queen Anne’s touched failed to cure Johnson. He later endured surgery that left him with permanent scars on his face and body.

To our minds, it might seem strange that so many people clamoured for the royal touch. There is a medical reason: scrofula is rarely fatal and often goes into remission on its own. If one’s remission coincides with the king’s touch, one has anecdotal proof that the royal hands can heal. If it doesn’t, one can always try the king again.

Beyond this, I’m fascinated by the royal touch because it’s a vivid reminder of how slowly popular beliefs change. By 1660, we’re well out of the Medieval era. Literary scholars would say that the “Early Modern” period is past, leaving us (presumably) in the modern world. Yet many traces of the Renaissance belief in magic remain. It’s a time when confusing things can be explained by mystery and miracle. The English people believe in astrology, witchcraft, divination – and the healing touch of a divinely appointed king.

15 comments:

Susan Abernethy said...

I too enjoyed Picard's book. Her one on Elizabethan England is just as good. T\

Y S Lee said...

Good to know, Susan! I have that one waiting on my shelf, too.

Leslie Wilson said...

Probably no less illusory than the 'benefits' conferred by monarchy nowadays.. Interesting blog! But is Queen Anne in fancy dress to carry out the ceremony?

Y S Lee said...

Ack! I've just double-checked my source and this is, apparently, Mary I doing the healing - not Anne. So glad you asked, Leslie.

About fancy dress: it seems as though the healing was taken very seriously. Picard calls it "the sole function of royalty that Charles had been able to exercise during the long and impoverished years of waiting", and that in 1662-63 the Crown spent some GBP5000 on "angel-gold (for the King's Evil)", which "was more than Prince Rupert got, or the 'Secretaries of State and Intelligence', both together".

Sarah Albee said...

Love--and own--all of Picard's books. And Charles II is one of my favorite kings! Great post.

Leslie Wilson said...

I am no royalist, just in case anyone hasn't noticed, and Charles 2nd's secret treaty with France was quite disgraceful, but at least he did turn out during the Great Fire to fight the flames..(reveals secret and shameful sentimentality maybe?)

Gillian Polack said...

I've thought for a long while that faith healing isn't so much a Medieval thing, as linked to religious views, and the 17th century was tremendously religious. I checked this with a friend, years back. He was an anthropologist and studying faith healing in Sydney in the 1980s. Apparently it was active even in the late twentieth century in a supposedly secular society. Now I don't know what to think, but I do know I want to explore it one day!

Y S Lee said...

Thank you, Sarah!

Leslie, I think it's hard to resist the creep of sentimentality when monarchs are so very dead and gone. I have no time for the living royal family, yet I could read forever about Queen Victoria.

Gillian Polack, I'd love to hear more about c20 *secular* faith healing! I know it's practised in some fundamentalist Christian circles but I didn't know about its secular existence.

Gillian Polack said...

The secular surprised me, too. I thought religious belief was the key element. I've lost track of the friend (and his study!)for they're in Japan but if ever I come across it or similar work, I shall keep you in mind.

Leslie Wilson said...

Removed last comment to edit unclarity..
Here it is again, edited!
Oh, yes, there certainly was, in the '90s, a movement of 'healing' which was part of the New Age, and definitely divorced from Christianity, though how far it and the Charismatic Movement in evangelical Christianity were part of the same zeitgeist is an interesting question. I remember seeing their stalls when I went, at my therapist's suggestion, to the Body, Mind and Spirit exhibition in London, an exhibition which may have contained some honest people, but definitely contained a lot of odd and irrational notions. My therapist, incidentally, wondered what I would make of it, and was highly amused, as he expected to be, by my report of it.. I remember a lady who believed in angels (again, divorced from any kind of theology) and when I asked her what angels did for her, she said 'well, like finding me a parking space.' (Shades of Wendy Cope, though then it was Jesus). I pointed out that someone else might need the parking space more than her, if they had a broken leg for example, and found it hard to walk, so she scratched her head and said she must think this over. The healers were there; healing was free, they said, but they needed a donation to keep going and the minimum donation was..I think £10, which is admittedly cheap, but way more than you'd have to put in the collection at a charismatic church. I suppose if you don't have to buy into a faith system, that might be considered worth some money. I am deeply sceptical about 'healing' as magic, though not about prayer for the sick, which I know can be hugely supportive and maybe that can lead to healing. But at least, in a secular context, it ducks the theological question about 'what about people who don't get healed, what does that say about God?' It then becomes something more that desperate people will try on the motto 'I'll try anything.' If it doesn't work, £10 is cheaper than homeopathy.(I don't believe in that, either). What I don't like, actually, is when churches use people's desperation to reel them in via 'healing' as a way of filling their services and persuading themselves that they are building up their congregations, or the hope that some of the religion may stick. I regret any offence the expression of these views may cause, though I don't regret expressing them. And yes, I am a religious person, though a Quaker, which to many evangelicals is an offence in itself...

Gillian Polack said...

I had no idea it existed outside one small part of! No wonder an anthropologist was interested. There's an implied structure of the universe in those explanations, and it's not unreligious.

Leslie Wilson said...

But religious in what I would call the 'manipulative' sense, such as when I burned an incense stick at a Chinese temple the day we flew back, and got a fortune that said: 'Travellers will not reach their destination.' I gave the God more incense and this time the fortune said: 'Travellers will reach home in record time.' In fact, our flight came in an hour early...Such manipulation coexists, of course, quite cheerfully with an ethical sense (in daoism, being good trumps all observance, so you can do something that is very bad feng shui, but if the person concerned is virtuous, they will have good fortune). However, these rather bloodless angels who exist only to find parking spaces are not the kind of supernatural beings I would want to consort with...

Gillian Polack said...

It's more like magic (manipulating the universe) than an act of faith, really, then.

Leslie Wilson said...

Gillian, there is a piece in today's G2 about the newest version of the Body Mind and Spirit - now the Mind, Body, Soul experience,written by Tim Dowling.The Spirit is Wack, it is called, and I think you will find it interesting. It doesn't sound that different from what I experienced twenty years ago..

Gillian Polack said...

I wasn't sure what G2 was, so I googled the author and title and lo, it appeared. Thank you! (and now I know that G2 refers to the Guardian!)