First modern analysis of the custom of the "royal touch" in the Tudor
and Stuart reigns.
The royal touch was the religious healing ceremony at which the monarch
stroked the sores on the face and necks of people who had scrofula in
order to heal them in imitation of Christ. The rite was practised by all
the Tudor and Stuart sovereigns apart from William III, reaching its
zenith during the Restoration when some 100,000 people were touched by
Charles II and James II.
This book, the first devoted to the royal touch for almost a century,
integrates political, religious, medical and intellectual history. The
custom is analysed from above and below: the royal touch projected
monarchical authority, but at the same time the great demand for it
created numerous problemsfor those organising the ceremony. The healing
rite is situated in the context of a number of early modern debates,
including the cessation of miracles and the nature of the body politic.
The book also assesses contemporary attitudes towards the royal touch,
from belief through ambivalence to scepticism. Drawing on a wide range
of primary sources including images, coins, medals, and playing cards,
as well as manuscripts and printed texts, it provides animportant new
perspective on the evolving relationship between politics, medicine and
sin in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.