In a manuscript account of the Restoration, written by Thomas Gumble, D.D. Chaplain to General Monck, in the year 1662, is the following description of the ceremony:--" There was a great chair placed for the king, in a place somewhat distant from the people. As soon as the king was sate, one of the clerks of the closet stood at the right side of his chair, holding on his arm as many gold angels (every one tied in a ribbon of white silk) as there were sick to be touched, which were in number, forty-eight. Dr. Brown, the chaplain of the Princess of Aurange, performed the place of the king's chaplain. The chaplain then read the sixteenth chapter of St. Mark, from the fourteenth verse to the end; and then the chirurgeon presented the sick, (having examined them to see that it was the evil) after three reverences on their knees, before the king, who, whilst the chaplain said these words in that gospel: 'They shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall be healed,' layed his hands on the two cheeks of the sick, saying, 'I touch thee, but _God_ healeth thee!' The chaplain then began another gospel; and whilst these words were pronounced out of the first chapter of St. John: 'This was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,' his majesty took the pieces of gold, and put them on the necks of the diseased, the chaplain repeating the words as many times as there were persons to receive them, concluding with a prayer, 'That Almighty God would bless the ceremony;' then, after the reverences as before, they retired. The Earls of Middlesex and St. Albans held the bason, ewer, and towel, whilst the king washed." Shakspeare, in his _Macbeth_, thus describes this royal, but now exploded gift:-- "Strangely visited people, All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures-- Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, Put on with holy prayers." In Nicholls's _Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century_, vol. ii. p. 495, 505, many curious particulars relating to this ceremony are to be found. As the custom has now for some time been discontinued, and the credulity of those who believed in its efficacy, laughed at, I hope it will not be long ere that disgusting custom of allowing persons (of whom women in general form by far the greater number) afflicted with the king's evil, and different other disorders, to come on the scaffold immediately after the execution of a criminal, for the purpose of touching the part affected, with the hand of the _but just dead_ malefactor, will be put a stop to; it being the very height of absurdity to imagine that it can be productive of any good effect; but on the contrary, tending to divest the minds of the surrounding multitude of that awe with which the ignominious spectacle should impress them. [Greek: S.G.]