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25. Gardiner, III, p. 212.

26. Richard Wiseman, Several Chirurgicall Treatises (London, 1676 edn), p. 245.

27. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997), ch. 44.

28. Wiseman, Chirurgicall Treatises, p. 247. For the effectiveness of the royal touch, see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century England (Harmondsworth, 1991 edn), pp. 242–4.

29. N. Woolf, ‘The Sovereign Remedy: Touch-Pieces and the King’s Evil’, British Numismatic Journal, 49 (1980 for 1979), 99–121; N. Woolf, ‘The Sovereign Remedy: Touch-Pieces and the King’s Evil, part 2’, British Numismatic Journal, 50 (1981 for 1980), 91–116.

30. Richards and Bloch read the many proclamations regulating the ceremony during the 1630s as evidence of Charles’s withdrawal: Judith Richards, ‘“His nowe Majestie” and the English Monarchy: The Kingship of Charles I before 1640’, PP, 113 (1986), 70–96, esp. pp. 88–93; Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch: Monarchy and Miracles in France and England, trans. J. E. Anderson (New York, 1989), pp. 207–8. Sharpe argues convincingly that this was evidence of his commitment to the practice: Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles 1 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), pp. 217–18, 630–31.

31. It did not, though, incorporate the ceremony into the Book of Common Prayer, as is sometimes suggested: George MacDonald Ross, ‘The Royal Touch and the Book of Common Prayer’, Notes and Queries, 30:5 (1983), 433–5.

32. Sharpe, Personal Rule, pp. 642–3, 782. Charles had also wanted, on his visit to Scotland in 1641, to touch Scottish legislation with his sceptre to symbolize his consent. This was resisted: David Stevenson, The Scottish Revolution, 1637–44: The Triumph of the Covenanters (Edinburgh, 2003), pp. 233–4.

33. For other references see A Perfect Diurnall (19–26 April 1647), p. 1564 (Holmby); Perfect Occurrences (8–15 October 1647), p. 281; and, possibly, A continuation of certain speciall and Remarkable Passages (28 August-3 September 1647), Saturday, 29 August; A Perfect Diurnall (16–23 August 1647), p. 1702. He also touched at Windsor on the eve of his trial but the practice was halted by his captors: Perfect Occurrences (22–30 December 1648), p. 778. I am grateful to Keith Lindley for these references.

34. Bloch, Royal Touch, pp. 207–10, for a brief narrative. For the origins of the English rite see Frank Barlow, ‘The King’s Evil’, EHR, 95 (1980), 3–27, which corrects most writing subsequent to Bloch. See, in general, Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, pp. 227–35. Much later work is indebted to the labours of Raymond Crawfurd, The King’s Evil (Oxford, 1911). Wiseman traced the power back to Edward the Confessor, as did the petition cited in n. 36 below.

35. J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1688–1832: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice during the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 160–67, 171; Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 228.

36. To the Kings most Excellent Majesty. The Humble petition Of divers hundreds of the kings poore Subjects Afflicted with that grievous infirmitie called The Kings Evil (London, 20 February 1643). In fact this petition was making a case for a peace party position: p. 8. Lilly had a number of enquiries about the King’s Evil during the war: e.g. Bod. L, Ashmolean MS 184, fo. 7v, 16r. For post-regicide versions of a similar point, with obvious political implications, see A Miracle of Miracles Wrought by the Blood of King Charles 1 (London, 1649).

37. Gardiner, III, pp. 212–13. For popular royalism see Ashton, Counter-Revolution, pp. 205–15.

38. Gardiner, III, p. 242; CJ, v, 151.

39. Gardiner, III, pp. 139, 145, 147; Ian Gentles, The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645–1653 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 143–4. For the February ordinance see A&O, I, pp. 913–14. For the case against physical coercion of conscience see, for example, the Leveller argument: ‘that no man for preaching or publishing his opinion in Religion, in a peaceable way,