tely, affirm that he often cured this complaint in Normandy;
whence appears how false is the notion, who in our times assert, that
the cure of this disease does not proceed from personal sanctity, but
from hereditary virtue in the royal line."[168] The fact that Edward
was a saint as well as a king throws some light on the subject, for
many miracles were attributed to him. Jeremy Collier maintained that
the scrofula miracle is hereditary upon all his successors, but we
find that not blood but royal prestige was the secret. He said "that
this prince cured the king's evil is beyond dispute: and since the
credit of this miracle is unquestionable, I see no reason why we
should scruple believing the rest.... King Edward the Confessor was
the first that cured this distemper, and from him it has descended as
an hereditary miracle upon all his successors. To dispute the matter
of fact, is to go to the excesses of skepticism, to deny our senses,
and be incredulous even to ridiculousness."[169]

The quotation given above from William of Malmesbury is the earliest
mention of the gift of healing by the royal touch. No historian at or
near the time of Edward has alluded to the supposed power vested in
him. Not even the bull of Pope Alexander III, by which Edward was
canonized about two centuries after his decease, makes any allusion
whatever to the cures effected by him through the imposition of hands.

English and French writers have disagreed not only regarding the
origin, but also regarding the real possession of the power, the
English denying it to the French kings and the French with equal vigor
restricting it to their own sovereigns. There seems to be little doubt
that the sovereigns of both nations made cures, but the healing was
confined to these two royal families; the intermarriages in the two
families probably account for the belief in the transmission of the
gift, regardless of the origin.

The ability to heal certain diseases passed down from reign to reign
notwithstanding the religious belief, the character, or the legitimate
succession of the sovereign, to the time of Queen Anne. It must not be
supposed that the practice was continuous for the seven centuries from
Edward the Confessor to Anne: we have no record whatever of the first
four Norman kings attempting to cure any one by the imposition of
hands, and we know that William III refused to attempt healing. Andrew
Boorde defines king's-evil as an "euyl sickenes o