IDEA OF ROYALTY 147 region of fact. As elsewhere he imparts Christian thought to Pagan times, so here, as in King John, Protestant ideas are found in a Catholic age. He misrepresents individual characters and commits many anachronisms, but all the while he perfectly delineates the constituent elements of the ideas or institutions his personages are intended to portray. Thus the prerogatives of royalty, their source, nature, and extent, the conditions of its lawful tenure; the position and duties of the nobles; the relations of the Church to the State; the reasons which justify rebellion; the shibboleths of the popular demagogue, the causes of a nation's decay, these and other important elements of statecraft appear in the historic plays. The poet's teaching on the source, prerogative, and restrictions of royalty is very explicit. The king is the deputy, anointed by Heaven, and rules only in God's name. He is the steward or minister of the divine law, and cannot be deposed by his subjects as if he were merely their delegate or executor. Thus the Bishop of Carlisle asks, regarding the proposed deposition of Richard II. : "And shall the figure of God's Majesty, -Richard II., iv. 1. The anointing of the sovereign, in the ceremony of consecration, was not in the poet's mind a mere ! form, but a sacred function, conferring real power from God, and ensuring the divine protection. Thus Richard exclaims : "Not all the water in the rough, rude sea For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd A glorious angel: then, if angels fight, Weak men must fall for heaven still guards the right." --Ibid., iii. 2. It was indeed the common Catholic doctrine that while the King obtained the jus ad rem, the right to reign or his title to the crown, by inheritance or election, his possession of the crown or his actual reign, jus in re, began with the sacred unction, which was administered only after the coronation oath had been taken.1 Elizabeth and her advisers recognised the necessity of conforming, at least outwardly, to this function, as establishing beyond question her right to the crown. She took the usual oath of Christian sovereigns to defend the Catholic faith and to guard the rights and immunities of the Church, and was duly anointed. But when she withdrew to be vested in the royal robes, she is reported to have said to her ladies-in-waiting, "Away with this oil is stinking." you, 1 "2 Hergenröther, "Church and State," Engl. trans., i. 261. THE "KING'S EVIL" 149 In keeping with the sanctity which the poet attaches to the consecration of a king, is the testimony he gives to the miraculous power attributed to sovereigns of healing by their touch the disease known as "king's evil." In "Macbeth" he introduces the following scene, in no way required by the dramatic development of the play, to relate the miraculous and prophetic gifts of St. Edward, and he brings in a physician to testify to the supernatural character of the cures effected : "Malcolm. Comes the king forth, I pray you? Doctor. Ay, Sir: there are a crew of wretched souls, The great assay of art; but at his touch, Such sanctity hath Heaven given in his hand, Malcolm. I thank you, Doctor. 'Tis called the 'evil' : Macduff. What's the disease he means? A most miraculous work in this good king: I have seen him do. Himself best knows How he solicits Heaven, but strangely-visited people, All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction. With this strange virtue, He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy ; And sundry blessings hang about his throne, That speak him full of grace."-Macbeth, iv. 3. James I. is said by Davenant to have written Shakespeare an autograph letter of thanks for this passage. It is no argument, however, against the reality of the gift that non-Catholic kings should have claimed to possess it. Healing, as well as prophecy, belongs to that class of gifts termed gratiæ gratis datæ, or gifts given for the benefit of others, which are conferred independently of the sanctity of their recipient.1 Balaam prophesied, so did Caiaphas, as the Gospel expressly tells us.2 The "golden stamp" of the passage just quoted refers to the gold medals which, according to the records of the Tower, Edward I. in 1272 gave to the sick persons he had touched. Dr. Johnson, when an infant three years old, was himself touched for "the evil" by Queen Anne, of whom he had a solemn recollection "as of a lady in diamonds and a long black hood." The experiment was made on the advice of Sir John Floyer, a celebrated physician of Lichfield. Dean Swift is also said to have believed in the virtue of the regal touch. The Protestant sovereigns from Queen Elizabeth omitted the sign of the Cross in the ceremony. 4 3 Although the sovereign's right to rule is from God, that right is conditioned, like that of any other human authority, by his exercising his power according to the divine law, whose administrator he is. Even Richard II. recognises this clearly. FORFEITURE OF THE CROWN "Show us the hand of God, That hath dismiss'd us from our stewardship; -Richard II., 151 iii. 3. How far, in the eyes of the poet's friends and associates, Henry VIII. or Elizabeth had been guilty of these three offences-profaning, stealing, usurping has been already shown. As a rule, the poet seems to regard the deposition of a tyrannical or corrupt ruler, not as a right for courts to enforce, but as a fatal and natural consequence of his misdeeds. This is so in the case of King John; and the same apparently natural nemesis is seen in the close of the reigns of Richard II., Henry VI., and Richard III. The nobles and people are alienated by misgovernment and crime: the crowning delinquency is often the murder of the heir to the throne, as in the case of both King John and Richard III. Henry VI., by disinheriting his son, really decrees his own downfall. The murder of Richard II. brands the conscience not only of Henry IV. but also of Henry V. What Shakespeare's judgment was, as we suppose, of Elizabeth's judicial murder of Mary, Queen of Scots, has been already stated. After the murder or disinheriting of the rightful heir, the prince's abuses of his power are ordinarily the causes of his fall. Disregard of the rights of land tenure, "farming his realm," as if he were |