English and French writers have disagreed not only regarding the origin, but also regarding the real possession of the power, the English denying it to the French kings and the French with equal vigor restricting it to their own sovereigns. There seems to be little doubt that the sovereigns of both nations made cures, but the healing was confined to these two royal families; the intermarriages in the two families probably account for the belief in the transmission of the gift, regardless of the origin. The ability to heal certain diseases passed down from reign to reign notwithstanding the religious belief, the character, or the legitimate succession of the sovereign, to the time of Queen Anne. It must not be supposed that the practice was continuous for the seven centuries from Edward the Confessor to Anne: we have no record whatever of the first four Norman kings attempting to cure any one by the imposition of hands, and we know that William III refused to attempt healing. Andrew Boorde defines king's-evil as an "euyl sickenes or impediment," and advises as follows: "For this matter let euery man make frendes to the Kynges maiestie, for it doth pertayne to a Kynge to helpe this infirmitie by the grace the whiche is geuen to a Kynge anoynted." In his _Introduction to Knowledge_ (1547-1548) he continues: "The Kynges of England by the power that God hath gyuen to them, dothe make sicke men whole of a sickeness called the kynges euyll."[170] There is a curious passage in Aubrey in which he says: "The curing of the King's Evil by the touch of the king, does much puzzle our philosophers, for whether our kings were of the house of York or Lancaster, it did the cure for the most part." Sir John Fortescue, in defending the House of Lancaster against the House of York, claimed that the crown could not descend to a female because the Queen was not qualified by the form of anointing her to cure the disease called the king's-evil. It must have been very comforting to all concerned to find that the power to cure disease by the royal touch had not been affected by the change of sex of the reigning sovereign.