Postcards from the Pit: The (truly) Royal Touch
The UK has a new King, Charles III, an odd choice of title given the deeply problematic nature of I and II. The Stuart father and son had different flaws, but they shared a commitment to the Divine Right of Kings, the conviction that they were directly chosen by God and could not be held accountable by any mere mortal—or Parliament. Their tyrannous mindset resulted in two separate revolutions within the same century, not an ideal precedent for a new king to follow.
Supposedly, belief in the Divine Right of Kings faded in the Stuarts’ wake and has no bearing on a modern monarchy. Nonetheless, last Saturday’s ceremony (funded by the secular British government) went to extreme lengths to emphasize the ‘divinely ordained’ angle—as has Charles in many of the grateful-sounding speeches given since his mother’s death last year. Given that he could have picked any one of his four names (Charles Phillip Arthur George) as his title, what does the nod to the doomed Stuarts, to whom he is only very distantly related, tell us about who the new king thinks he is—other than a tenth generation nepo baby?
The Stone of Scone
During the coronation, the formal transformation from prince to king occurred when the Archbishop of Canterbury used a 12th century golden spoon to anoint Charles’ head, chest, and hands with holy oil from Jerusalem. It’s a deliberate evocation of the Hebrew Bible, 1 Kings 1:39 (“And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle, and anointed Solomon.”) —in case anyone missed the significance, Handel composed “Zadok the Priest” for King George II’s coronation in 1727. It’s telling that these few minutes were blocked from the view of cameras and congregation. As any stage musician will tell you, if you want the rubes to suspend their disbelief, conceal the clunkier parts of your illusion behind a screen.
At this point, Charles was seated atop another callback to the Bible, the Stone of Scone (rhymes with ‘spoon’) aka The Stone of Destiny. This stone is referred to in Genesis 28:11, used as a pillow by Jacob as he dreamed of a ladder to heaven. Over centuries, the stone traveled to Egypt, then Ireland, and ended up in Scotland. It was used to weed out pretenders to the throne: if a legitimate claimant sat upon it, it was said to emit a groan. Impostors elicited nothing but silence. Edward I, eager to establish his own legitimacy, pillaged it from the Abbey of Scone in 1296 and housed it in the base of the Coronation Chair, where it remained until last century.
At least that’s the story. Modern analysis suggests the sandstone is not Biblical in origin, but was hewn from a quarry near Scone. It’s possible that the Scots hid the real Stone of Destiny from Edward and sent him back south with a replica. A stone’s a stone. Nonetheless, the theft of the Stone of Scone rankled with Scottish Nationalists for centuries, until in 1950 a crew of students mounted a daring raid on Westminster Abbey, jimmied the Stone from the chair, and took back control. They placed it on the altar at Arbroath Abbey, in tacit support of Scottish independence. It returned to London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, where it remained until it was formally given back by John Major in 1996, and displayed in Edinburgh Castle.
A thoroughly modern monarch, especially one as preservation-minded as Charles, might have been happy to let the Stone of Destiny rest in peace. However, this ancient and fragile artifact was shipped back to London, where it was jammed into its former slot inside another ancient and fragile artifact, just to check a box on the Sassenach king’s “Establish Legitimacy and Biblical Authority” To Do list. Scottish nationalists argued that instead of moving the sacred stone, some aspect of the coronation should take place in Scotland. After all, Charles’ legitimacy rests on the fact that he is a (distant) relative of the Kings of Scotland, the original Stuarts. The kingdoms have been jointly ruled since 1603, when James VI of Scotland found himself next in line for his cousin Elizabeth’s throne.
An Instrument of the Divine
James VI of Scotland was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and was crowned King of Scotland, aged just thirteen months old, when his mother was forced to abdicate. James, raised as a Protestant bulwark against the claims of various Catholic Tudors, went hard on the Divine Right of Kings. The ancient doctrine had been revisited by Protestant countries since the Reformation as a way of denying Papal authority. Yes, the Pope was hand-picked by God, but so were monarchs. They did not need to bow to Papal authority as they were Chosen Ones too. The Tudors regarded it as a political tool. Henry VIII found it particularly handy when demanding obedience from his subjects, and Elizabeth I used it to silence those naysayers who questioned her ability to rule as an unmarried queen, as well as quelling rebellion from James’ mother Mary, and the Duke of Norfolk.
In England and France, Divine Right was more than a mandate to rule without opposition or accountability. Since the time of Edward the Confessor (a king and a saint), people believed that it made royalty a vessel for religious healing, especially when it came to curing scrofula, lesions and/or tumors around the head and neck probably caused by a form of tuberculosis, known as ‘the King’s Evil’. The act of touching was formalized into a specific religious ceremony designed for Henry VII:
“the Sick Person shall likewise kneel before the King: And then the King shall lay His Hand upon the Sore of the Sick Person.”
Once touched (or once the monarch waved their hands in the general direction of the oozing sore), the sufferer was given a gold coin (known as an ‘Angel’ as it depicted St. Michael) and sent back to their parish. The Tudors used their miraculous powers sparingly, setting up ceremonies only in the cooler months, Michaelmas to Easter, to minimize their close contact with the stench of suppurating flesh. It was an unpleasant, but politic chore Although they may have had doubts as to whether it actually cured the sick or not, the Royal Touch was another way to prove their legitimacy.
James I embraced the Divine Right of Kings doctrine enthusiastically, perhaps because he had no memory, no consciousness of being anything other than a king. As James VI of Scotland, he took his ‘on a mission from God’ status very seriously. He involved himself personally in the fight against the Devil in his land, zealously persecuting sundry social scapegoats accused of witchcraft. He distilled his demon-fighting experience into a book Daemonologie, in 1597. He also penned the Basilikon Doron (1599), on kingly powers and duties. But he always had his eye on the English court. After Elizabeth I died, he was the acknowledged Protestant successor, more than ready to take on the job of uniting the two kingdoms.
James considered himself a wise, experienced king, with thirty five years ruling Scotland under his belt, but he lacked appreciation for the nuances of the English court. He crash landed among wily political veterans who connived against his authoritarianism. Nobody cared much about persecuting witches. He didn’t understand the growing power of the middle classes. He also faced Catholic opposition (see: the Gunpowder Plot) and fought with Parliament about money. The Royal Touch seemed near-blasphemous to him, and he took part in the ceremonies with distaste.
Nonetheless, he continued to cling to his divine entitlement, declaring it over and over in treatises and sermons. He had the Bible “translated” (really, rewritten) to support the supremacy of anointed kings over the earthly estate. He told the Lords and Commons of Parliament in 1609 “For Kings are not onley GODS Lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon GODS throne, but by GOD himself they are called Gods.”
Naturally, there was pushback, but James became even more entrenched in his own righteousness. He dissolved Parliament when it wouldn’t bow to his will, triggered an economic crisis, sowed discord internationally, beheaded national hero Sir Walter Raleigh, and sold patents of monopoly to raise funds, rather than encouraging innovation. When Charles I took the throne in 1625, his ineptitude was no match for the mess he inherited.
Off With His Head
For many in Parliament, and among his subjects, Charles I was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad king, committed to absolutism without understanding the laws of political physics, that tyranny creates an equal and opposite force of rebellion. Charles’ arrogance gave common cause to rebels scattered through the ranks at Court, in Parliament, the Church, the various splintering factions of Protestantism, and among ordinary people wearied by his antics. His weaknesses led to Civil War in 1642 and ended only as his head rolled off the chopping block in 1649.
In life, he wasn’t the most enthusiastic proponent of the Royal Touch. It brought him face to purulent face with the subjects he despised, but it was too important a ritual for him not to play the game, a way of cementing support from Royalists. On December 27, 1633, he touched 100 sufferers at a single ceremony at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. Upon his execution, however, Charles became King, Martyr, and Executed Man, an almighty combination in terms of healing powers. Attendants at the execution supposedly collected his blood by soaking it into handkerchiefs. In Adenochoiradelogia (1684), celebrated anatomist John Browne wrote in awe of:
“the marvelous and miraculous efficacy of the Blood of our late Sacred Martyr King CHARLES the First; wherein by strange Examples are discovered this efficacious Virtue of Healing, by many true Devoters of His Great Name, the which, altho stript of its Life, yet not robb’d of its vigor, made good by many, who collected the lame in Linnen, and applying thereof to their Scrophulous Swellings, by which they found immediate ease, and present relief.”
Royalists kept faith with their king during the Interregnum by handing round his relics. This set the stage for the arrival of Charles II, by far the most dedicated Royal Toucher. Browne records the data in Adenochoiradelogia (p.197): 6,725 people in 1660, 4,619 in 1661, then between 3,000-4,000 every year until the bonza 1682, when 8,577 scrofula sufferers passed beneath his healing hands. It’s estimated that Charles II royal touched almost 100,000 during his reign. Samuel Pepys described him conducting the ceremony on April 13, 1661 “with great dignity…[although].. It seemed to me to be an ugly office and a simple one.”
His miracle powers provided a solid distraction from his adultery (producing at least sixteen illegitimate children), Black Death ripping through the populace, large swathes of London burning down, and the ongoing struggles between religious factions, all while Parliament sought to minimize the crown’s authority (especially by limiting Charles’ Royal Prerogative) while maximizing its own.
On the plus side, Charles II certainly enjoyed life, reopening theatres closed by Cromwell and relishing his role as benevolent patron of the arts–and as a sporting nobleman. John Evelyn described a typical Sunday night at the palace as “a scene of utmost vanity”:
“...unexpressable luxury, and prophanesse, gaming, and all dissolution, and as it were total forgetfullnesse of God… the King, sitting and toying with his Concubines Portsmouth, Cleaveland, and Mazarine: etc: A French boy singing love songs, in that glorious Gallery, whilst about 20 of the greate Courtiers and other dissolute persons were at Basset round a large table, a bank of at least 2000 in Gold before them…”
Much more popular than his father or grandfather, the merry monarch managed to hold the kingdom together, but only just. He never managed to produce a legitimate male heir, so on his death his Catholic brother James II (another absolutist) took the throne, which resulted pretty swiftly in Glorious Revolution in 1688, when William of Orange took over. James II’s daughter Anne (she of the seventeen dead children) was the last of the Stuart monarchs, permitted to reign from 1702-1714 only because she was a staunch Protestant. She was also the last English monarch to perform the Royal Touch. When she died, the 1701 Act of Succession passed the English throne to the Stuarts’ more reliable (i.e. Protestant) Hanoverian cousins, who didn’t believe in such idolatrous nonsense. The current Saxe-Coburg-Gotha Windsor family firm are the Hanovers’ descendents.
The Direct Line
There were still Stuarts out there, after Anne, who, according to strict laws and traditions, had more of a claim on the English throne than the Hanoverians. They retreated to Scotland and, as any Outlander fan knows, kept rattling their muskets through the first half of the eighteenth century (the Jacobite risings) but gradually faded away. The Stuart line still exists: the current heir apparent is Franz von Bayern of the House Of Wittelsbach, a direct descendant of Princess Henrietta-Anne, the youngest daughter of Charles I.
Which brings us back to the extravagance pomp and circumstance of last weekend, the obsession with legitimacy, the insistence on placing a symbol of the Scottish monarchy beneath the current Anglo-German family, the chosen title (a third Charles) suggesting an uninterrupted line of descent from the Stuarts. Does it whisper ‘imposter syndrome’?
During that moment of divine anointing, when the holy oil oozed down his cheeks, did the Stone of Scone let out its signature groan, confirming the rightful heir was seated on the throne? Does he worry, despite his professed religious devotion, that he is not God’s Chosen one? Do scrofulous hordes haunt his nightmares, pleading for his healing touch? Does he fear that if he laid his hands upon them, nothing would happen?
There’s horror in there, amid the pageantry. Despite all the protestations to the contrary, can we really strip royalty of all the superstition and supernatural beliefs that have sustained the institution for centuries? The omens are not good. Historically, the ‘20s have been a time of unrest and upheaval in every century. Charles III, like Charles I, presides over a divided kingdom, plagued by pandemics, struggling with economic uncertainty and economic unrest, the populace running scared from immigration and technological innovation. Is he the right man for the job, the Chosen One, or, like his namesakes, is he about to trigger a revolution? Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, indeed.
Watch: Macbeth (1971)
Shakespeare also pondered the issues raised by the Stuarts’ reliance on the Divine Right of Kings. He penned Macbeth (1606) specifically to appeal to the patron of the King’s Players, James I. It begins by acknowledging the monarch’s pet peeve, witches, plotting against the natural order of things. Macbeth’s ambition is shown as depraved—how can a man not chosen by God ever hope to hold onto the throne? No matter how horrific the violence, how demented the usurper, legitimacy wins in the end. There’s even an awestruck description of the Royal Touch, from Malcolm:
“Tis called the Evil: A most miraculous work in this good King, Which often, since my here-remain in England I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven Himself best knows: but 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: and ‘tis spoken To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction. With this strange virtue He has a heavenly gift of prophecy, And sundry blessings have about his throne That speak him full of grace. (Macbeth, IV:3, 146-158)
Polanski wasn’t seeking anyone’s approval with his stark vision of the Scottish Play. His Macbeth offers the viewer a double dose of toil and trouble: one man driven mad by fear, guilt, rage and regret offers his take on another. Polanski chose Macbeth as a way of working through the loss of his wife, Sharon Tate, and the whole Manson thing. It’s bleak, brutal, and thoroughly in keeping with the mood of our times. Fun fact: the historical Macbeth was crowned atop the Stone of Scone, just like Charles.
This has been a special deep history edition. Next time, we’ll return to the present day. Or thereabouts. Thank you for reading.