God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [284]
Charles had touched for the Evil throughout the 1630s, although, characteristically, he had also issued numerous proclamations attempting to bring order to the procedure.30 The 1635 edition of the Prayer Book had been bound with directions for the touching ceremony: this came close to integrating the enactment of sacred monarchy into the liturgy of the national church, of which, of course, he was head.31 In that sense, touching was a powerful demonstration of exactly the image of monarchy and church that Charles had consistently defended. It is, perhaps, no surprise that he had touched at Edinburgh during his coronation visit in 1633 and at York on the eve of his ill-fated campaign in the second Bishops” War.32 He was certainly assiduous about touching in the spring of 1647 and afterwards: it made his point that someone with these powers could not reasonably be asked to submit to the terms of the Newcastle Propositions and suggested that there were many others who might agree.33
Only the French and English kings claimed the power to touch, the English claiming that since the time of Edward the Confessor their monarchs had been endowed with this power. In fact, it seems, the ceremony was of more recent origin and some of the evidence cited that there was an unbroken tradition from the time of the Confessor comes from seventeenth-century claims to that effect.34 Indeed, Charles and his son seem to have been among the most enthusiastic touchers in English history,35 and it may be their propaganda that fooled historians subsequently.
Not only did the rite chime with Charles I’s sense of church and state, but it made a powerful political point at a moment when monarchy was being demystified. The relationship between the sacred office and the royal body was here very direct. At Hull in 1642 Sir John Hotham had refused the King entry, claiming that the King’s authority was expressed through Parliament, and that in obeying an order of Parliament he was not disobeying the King. Charles had nailed this argument of convenience with a neat debating point – he was familiar with the argument that his authority could be where his body was not, but not that his body could be where his authority was not. In 1643 some poor petitioners had sought permission from the King to go from London to Oxford to receive the touch. This miraculous cure, they noted, ‘is one of the greatest of his Majesty’s prerogatives, which no force can deprive your highness of’.36 Touching demonstrated the particular powers that resided in the King’s actual body, while at the same time demonstrating the seamlessness of his political vision.
It was not just those with scrofula who were drawn to the King. Outside Leeds the road was crowded for two miles with onlookers and everywhere he went the bells were rung. On 13 February, Fairfax rode out from Nottingham to meet him and there was an honourable exchange between the two former enemies. In Northamptonshire hundreds of gentry came to escort him and in Northampton bells were again rung and guns fired in his honour. Wherever he went, apparently, he was greeted with shouts of ‘God bless your majesty!’ and he arrived at Holmby, unsurprisingly, in very good spirits.37 In April 1647, as crowds continued to flock to Holmby for the healing touch, Henry Marten jokingly suggested in the Commons that ‘the parliament’s Great Seal might do it if there was an ordinance for it’. He was responding to preparations to send the Newcastle Propositions to the King once more, and his barb was linked to his description of the King