But this miraculous gift of healing did not, it seems, belong exclusively to the kings of France and England. {300a} The Earls, or princes of the house of Hapsburg also, are reported to have had it in no scanty measure. They cured the strumous, or scrofulous, it is said, by giving them drink, and the stammerers, by kissing them. But the Kings of Hungary seem to have exceeded all; for we are told that they _could_ cure, not only the king’s evil, but all disorders occasioned by poison, the bite of a viper, or any other venomous animal. “Mr. _Bel_, who tells us this, observes (what is as remarkable as the account itself) that he cannot find in history, that these Hungarian kings ever exercised this wonderful power. {300b} More shame for them, the unfeeling wretches! if they possessed it. “The case was otherwise with the royal doctors of France and England, who have not been so shy of exerting this power, or rather, of practising this quackery. Some French writers (says Carte) ascribe this gift of healing to the king’s devotion towards the relics of St. Marculf, in the Church of Corbigny, in Champagne, to which the kings of France, immediately after their coronation at Rheims, used to go in solemn procession: and it must be owned there was formerly a great veneration paid to this saint in England. It was in memory of him that a room in the palace of Westminster frequently mentioned in the rolls of parliament, was called the chamber of St. Marculf; being probably the place where our kings touched for the Evil. It is now (our historian adds) called the painted chamber: and though the name of that saint hath been long forgot in this nation, yet the sanative virtue of our kings still continues.” {301a} Of the most noted among our sovereigns, as practitioners in this healing art, the following is thought a pretty complete list. Nothing seems to be known in this way of Harold II. or yet of the four succeeding princes; but that Henry II. practised very successfully is said to be attested by Petrus Blesensis, who had been his chaplain. {301b} It seems highly probable that Henry III. likewise was often applied to, and successfully practised in the same way, as John of Geddesden, a physician, who is said to live about that time, advises a scorfulous patient, after his remedies had proved ineffectual, to apply to the king for a cure: for which he has been much blamed, and seemingly not without reason, as, in case he deemed the royal touch a certain care or remedy, he ought to have sent the patient to the king at first, without troubling him with operation and medicine. {302a}