Think of this in connection with the fact that "in five years Charles II. touched twenty-three thousand six hundred and one of his subjects for the evil; that the bishops invented a sort of heathen service for the occasion; that the unchristianlike, superstitious ceremony was performed in public; and that, as soon as prayers were ended, the Duke of Buckingham brought a towel, and the Earl of Pembroke a basin and ewer, who, after they had made obeisance to his majesty, kneeled down till his majesty had washed." Dr. Wiseman, an eminent surgeon of that period, in writing on scrofula, says, "However, I must needs profess that his majesty (Charles II.) cureth more in any one year than all the chirurgeons of London have done in an age." And think at the same time of the trial of a mother and her daughter, eleven years old, before "the great and good Sir Matthew Hale," then Lord Chief Baron, for witchcraft; and their conviction and execution at Bury St. Edmunds, principally on the evidence of Sir Thomas Browne, one of the first physicians and scholars of his day. In Fuller's Church History there is a curious fact, showing the power of superstition over even such a man as Wolsey. The great cardinal "in his life-time was informed by some fortune-tellers that he should have his end at Kingston. This his credulity interpreted of Kingston-on-Thames; which made him always avoid the riding through that town, though the nearest way from his house to the court. Afterward, understanding that he was to be committed by the king's express orders to the charge of Sir Anthony Kingston, it struck to his heart; too late perceiving himself deceived by that father of lies in his homonymous prediction."