I add a further illustration of the superstition of the age, not amongst the ignorant, but the educated. Rectors of parishes requested the Secretary of State to procure His Majesty’s touch for parishioners who were troubled with the malady. When Charles II. went to Newmarket, Sir Thomas Browne wrote to Sergeant Knight, and sent certificates for divers afflicted persons who were going from Norwich to be touched by the King. No fewer than 92,107 persons were asserted by the eminent physician, just named, to have passed through this ceremony between the years 1660 and 1683. One woman is said to have been cured of blindness by these wonderful means; and greater marvel still, a man is reported to have been cured of Nonconformity by witnessing the effect of the Royal fingers upon his child!--he expressed his thanks in this method: “Farewell to all Dissenters, and to all Nonconformists; if God can put so much virtue into the King’s hand as to heal my child, I’ll serve that God and that King so long as I live with all thankfulness.” An example of other absurd beliefs is found in a statement made to the Secretary of State, about a salmon which came up to the River Avon, on a Christmas Day. It was represented as being so religious, that it allowed itself to be touched by a staff, whereas at other times it is said, “Salmon are so shy that they endure not the least shadow.” “If any one made a prey of these quiet _Christian fish_ they came to an unfortunate end.”[320] Samuel Hartlib, in his correspondence with Dr. Worthington, of Cambridge, raised a question respecting angelic apparitions: “For long-bearded, good angels,” he says, “or lady-angels of true light, they do indeed cross all the old records of antiquity, whether Gentile or Jewish, neither Mercury, nor Gabriel, appeared otherwise than in prime of youthful vigour.”[321] The Cambridge scholar inclined to the idea, that angels might appear in long beards, and told his friend a story of a stranger, who knocked at a sick man’s door, and directed him to make use of two red sage leaves, and one blood-wort leaf, steeped in beer for three days,--and to live for a month in fresh country air. “Several circumstances,” he gravely added, “made it probable that he who came was a good angel, and if so, that he appeared as a grave old man, very tall and straight, of a very fresh colour, his hair as white as wool, and his beard broad and very white.” This old man, believed to be an angelic visitant, wore new shoes, tied with black ribbons.[322] CHAPTER XII.