prayers, antiphonies, and a benediction. Such was the ceremony of touching for the cure of the king’s evil. The expense of this ceremony, in the shape of coins put round the sufferers’ necks, was little less than £10,000 a-year. The whole affair was a huge piece of costly and superstitious foolery, ending in no beneficial results whatever. We dare to assert this, notwithstanding the solemn assurance of one of the surgeons of King Charles II., that the gift of healing was communicated by the unction administered at the coronation, and that the cures were so numerous, and sometimes so rapid, that they could not be attributed to any natural cause whatever. King William had too much sense to be duped, and too much honesty to bear a part in what he knew to be an imposture.[79] “It is a silly superstition,” said he, when he heard that, at the close of Lent, his palace was besieged by a crowd of sick persons: “give the poor creatures some money and send them away.” Only on one single occasion was he successfully importuned to lay his hand on a patient’s sores. “God give you better health,” he said, “and more sense!” What was the result of this abandonment of royal practice? The parents of scrofulous children cried out against William’s cruelty. Bigots lifted up their hands and eyes at his impiety. Jacobites sarcastically praised him for not presuming to arrogate to himself a power which belonged only to legitimate sovereigns. And even some of his own friends thought he acted unwisely in treating with such marked contempt a superstition which had so strong a hold on the vulgar mind. But William was not to be moved, and was accordingly set down by many High Churchmen as an infidel, or at least a Puritan. ----- Footnote 79: William tried to put down the practice, and yet, as late as Lent, in 1712, Dr Johnson was “touched” by Queen Anne. ----- As soon as William and Mary ascended the throne of England the new oath of allegiance was tendered. It was conceived in the simplest form, the words “rightful and lawful sovereigns” being, upon mature deliberation, omitted. Notwithstanding this modification, several members, both of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, refused to take it. Among these were the Earls of Clarendon, Lichfield, and Exeter, and likewise seven bishops, including five who had been sent to the Tower for refusing obedience to the mandates of James. The spiritual lords who refused the oath of allegiance to William and Mary were Sancroft, the primate, Turner, Bishop of Ely, Lake, of Chichester, Ken, of Bath, White, of Peterborough, Thomas, of Worcester, and Frampton, of Gloucester. Above four hundred of the clergy, including some of the highest distinction, followed the example set by Sancroft and the six bishops, and thus began the schism of the _Nonjurors_,—a term which became as prominent as that of _Nonconformists_ had been under the last two Stuarts.