The Honourable Daines Barrington[218] has preserved an anecdote, which he heard from an old man who was witness in a cause with respect to this supposed miraculous power of Healing. "He had, by his evidence, fixed the time of a fact, by Queen Anne's having been at Oxford, and touched him, whilst a child, for the Evil. When he had finished his evidence, I had an opportunity of asking him, whether he was really cured? Upon which he answered, with a significant smile, "that he believed himself to have never had any complaint that deserved to be considered as the Evil; but that his parents were poor, _and had no objection to the bit of gold_." [218] Observations on the Statutes. The learned and honourable Writer very properly observes on this occasion, "that this piece of gold, which was given to those who were touched, accounts for the great resort upon this occasion, and the supposed afterwards miraculous cures." GEORGE I. Although this Monarch, who succeeded to the Crown in 1714, had the good sense not to pretend to this miraculous Gift, it was assumed by the Descendants of the race of Stuarts. And it is well recollected, that Mr. Carte's (in other respects very excellent) "History of England" fell into almost immediate disrepute, on his making, in one of his notes, a bold assertion, the substance of which shall be here given: "Whatever is to be said in favour of its being appropriated to the eldest Descendant of the first branch of the Royal Line of the Kings of France, England, &c. I have _myself_ seen a very remarkable instance of such a cure, which could not possibly be ascribed to the Royal _Unction_. One Christopher Lovel, born at Wells in Somersetshire, but when he grew up residing in the City of Bristol, where he got his living by labour, was extremely afflicted for many years with that distemper, and such a flow of the scrophulous humour, that, though it found a vent by five running sores about his breast, neck, and arms, there was such a tumour on one side of his neck, as left no hollow between his cheek and the upper part of his left shoulder, and forced him to keep his head always awry. The young man was reduced, by the virulence of the humour, to the lowest state of weakness; appeared a miserable object in the eyes of all the inhabitants of that populous city; and, having for many years tried all the remedies which the art of physic could administer, without receiving any benefit, resolved at last to go _abroad_ to be touched. He had an uncle in the place, who was an old seaman, and carried him from Bristol, at the end of August, A. D. 1716, along with him to Cork in Ireland, where he put him on board a ship that was bound to St. Martin's in the Isle of Ree. From thence Christopher made his way first to Paris, and thence to the place where he was touched, in the beginning of November