those six running wounds. She
had the same distemper also on her left eye, so she was almost blind.
Her mother, despairing of preserving her sight, and being not of ability
to send her to London to be touched by the king, being miserably poor,
having many poor children, and this girl not being able to work, her
mother, desirous to have her daughter cured, sent to the chirurgeons for
help, who tampered with it for some time, but could do no good. She
went likewise ten or eleven miles to a seventh son, but all in vain. No
visible hopes remained, and she expected nothing but the grave.

'But now, in this the girl's great extremity, God, the great physician,
dictates to her, then languishing in her miserable, hopeless condition,
what course to take and what to do for a cure, which was to go and touch
the Duke of Monmouth. The girl told her mother that, if she could
but touch the Duke she would be well. The mother reproved her for her
foolish conceit, but the girl did often persuade her mother to go to
Lackington to the Duke, who then lay with Mr. Speaks. "Certainly," said
she, "I should be well if I could touch him." The mother slighted these
pressing requests, but the more she slighted and reproved, the more
earnest the girl was for it. A few days after, the girl having noticed
that Sir John Sydenham intended to treat the Duke at White Lodge in
Henton Park, this girl with many of her neighbours went to the said
park. She being there timely waited the Duke's coming. When first she
observed the Duke she pressed in among a crowd of people and caught
him by the hand, his glove being on, and she likewise having a glove to
cover her wounds. She not being herewith satisfied at the first attempt
of touching his glove only, but her mind was she must touch some part
of his bare skin, she, weighing his coming forth, intended a second
attempt. The poor girl, thus between hope and fear, waited his motion.
On a sudden there was news of the Duke's coming on, which she to be
prepared rent off her glove, that was clung to the sores, in such haste
that she broke her glove, and brought away not only the sores but the
skin. The Duke's glove, as Providence would have it, the upper part hung
down, so that his hand-wrist was bare. She pressed on, and caught him
by the bare hand-wrist with her running hand, crying, "God bless your
highness!" and the Duke said "God bless you!" The girl, not a little
transported at her good success, came and assured