Henry IV., the first king of the House of Lancaster, touched for the evil. This we learn from a "Defence to the title of House of Lancaster," written by Sir John Fortesque, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. He speaks of the practice as "belonging to the kings of England from time immemorial." This pamphlet is preserved among the Cottonian manuscripts in the British Museum. The earliest king of the House of Tudor, Henry VII., was the first to give a small gold piece, known as a touch-piece, to those undergoing the ceremony. During the reign of the next monarch, Henry VIII., little attention appears to have been given to the subject. It was at this period largely practised in France. Cardinal Wolsey, when at the Court of Francis I., in 1527, witnessed the king touch two hundred people. On Easter Sunday, 1686, Louis XIV. is recorded to have touched 1,600. He used these words:--"_Le Roy te touche, Dieu te gueisse._" ("The King touches thee. May God cure thee!") Coming back to the history of our own country, and dealing with the more interesting passages bearing on this theme, we find that in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, William Clowes, the Court Surgeon, believed firmly in the efficacy of the royal touch. "The king's queen's evil," he says, "is a disease repugnant to nature, which grievous malady is known to be miraculously cured and healed by the sacred hands of the Queen's most Royal Majesty, even by Divine inspiration and wonderful work and power of God, above man's will, act, and expectation." In this reign, under the title of "_Charisma; sive Donum Sanationis_," a book was published by William Fookes bearing testimony to the cures effected by royal touch on all sorts and conditions of people from various parts of the country. The Stuarts paid particular attention to the practice. No fewer than eleven proclamations published during the reign of Charles I. are preserved at the State Paper Office, and chiefly relate to the times the afflicted might attend the court to receive the royal touch. In course of time the king's pecuniary means became limited, and he was unable to present gold touch-pieces, so silver was substituted, and many received the rite of touch only. During the Commonwealth we have not any trace of Cromwell touching for the malady. During the rising in the West of England, the Duke of Monmouth, who claimed to be the rightful heir to the throne, touched several persons for the evil, and, said a newspaper of the time, with success. One of the charges made against him on his trial at Edinburgh for high treason, was, that he had "touched children of the King's Evil." Two witnesses proved the charge, having witnessed the ceremony at Taunton.