The king's evil.

  • Crawfurd, Raymond Henry Payne, Sir, 1865-1938.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The king's evil. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    does she stay at Court, ere the good God has wiped away all her unsightliness, and fashioned her with sweet comeliness. And she who for this or some other in- firmity was aforetime barren, in the same year became fertile by her husband, and thenceforth lived a pleasant sight for all that shared her home to see. Now, strange though it may seem to us, the French say that he often did the same thing in his young days, when he was in Neustria, which is now called Normandy.] The record continues with a description of the mira- culous healing of certain blind men, together with an account of miracles performed at his tomb. William of Malmesbury1 reproduces in his Chronicle the above passage with merely slight verbal alterations, and it is this which hitherto has been regarded as the first account of the Confessor touching for the Evil. He appends, however, a passage of no small importance, as follows: Unde nostro tempore quidam falsam insinuant operam, qui asseverant istius morbi curationem non ex sanctitate, sed ex regalis prosapiae hereditate fluxisse. [Wherefore it is a falsehood that some declare nowa- days, who assert that the cure of that disease was derived not from his holiness, but by inheritance from his royal lineage.] These passages establish beyond all doubt, that a few years before his death the Confessor healed by touch in his English kingdom a case of scrofula, as then con- ceived. That he was the first king to do so in England must also be conceded, if the words ' licet nobis novum videatur' are to carry any significance. Further, it is stated that he had often touched for scrofula, when living with his mother in exile at the Norman Court, before he was recalled to receive the crown. It is also clear that he bestowed his touch not only on scrofula but on cases of blindness; and finally, that in the time 1 De Gestis Regum Anglorum, lib. ii.