to London, where he was touched by the Queen. When asked in later
years if he could remember the latter, he used to say that he had a
"confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in
diamonds and a long black hood."[88:1] George I, the successor of Queen
Anne, regarded the Royal Touch as a purely superstitious method of
healing, and during his reign the practice fell into desuetude.

The English jurist, Daines Barrington (1727-1800), in his "Observations
upon the Statutes," relates the case of an old man whom he was examining
as a witness. This man stated that he had been touched for the evil by
Queen Anne, when she was at Oxford. Upon being asked whether the
treatment had been effective, he replied facetiously that he did not
believe that he ever had the evil, but that his parents were poor, and
did not object to the piece of gold.[88:2]

During the reign of George II, a writer of a speculative turn of mind
queried whether the disuse of this long-established custom might be
attributed to the sullenness of the reigning prince, who, as was
generally known, had received many evidences of his subjects'
displeasure; or whether the alleged divine power of healing by the Royal
Touch had been withdrawn from him. And it was replied that the sovereign
had as good a title as any of his predecessors to perform this holy
operation. Moreover, he was so much in love with all sorts of pageantry
and acts of power that he would willingly do his part. But the
degeneracy and wickedness of the times, which tended to bring all pious
and holy things into contempt, and then into disuse, was the reason for
this neglect.[89:1]

In the year 1746, or thereabouts, one Christopher Lovel, a native of
Wells, in Somersetshire, but afterwards a resident of Bristol, being
sadly afflicted with the King's Evil, and having during many years made
trial of all the remedies which medical science could suggest, and
without any effect, decided to go abroad in search of a cure. Proceeding
to France, he was touched at Avignon by the eldest lineal descendant of
a race of kings, who had, for a long succession of ages, healed by
exercising the royal prerogative. But this descendant and heir had not
at that time been crowned. Notwithstanding this fact, however, the usual
effects followed, and from the moment that the man was touched, and
invested with the narrow ribbon, to which a small silver coin was
pendant, according to the rites prescribed in