we lack for our lodgings at Whitehall.  My dear friend Mr. Fuller of Twickenham and I dined alone at the Sun Tavern, where he told me how he had the grant of being Dean of St. Patrick’s, in Ireland; and I told him my condition, and both rejoiced one for another.  Thence to my Lord’s, and had the great coach to Brigham’s, who went with me to the Half Moon, and gave me a can of good julep, and told me how my Lady Monk deals with him and others for their places, asking him L500, though he was formerly the King’s coach-maker, and sworn to it.  My Lord abroad, and I to my house and set things in a little order there.  So with Mr. Moore to my father’s, I staying with Mrs. Turner who stood at her door as I passed.  Among other things she told me for certain how my old Lady Middlesex——­herself the other day in the presence of the King, and people took notice of it.  Thence called at my father’s, and so to Mr. Crew’s, where Mr. Hetley had sent a letter for me, and two pair of silk stockings, one for W. Howe, and the other for me.  To Sir H. Wright’s to my Lord, where he, was, and took direction about business, and so by link home about 11 o’clock.  To bed, the first time since my coming from sea, in my own house, for which God be praised.

23d.  By water with Mr. Hill towards my Lord’s lodging and so to my Lord.  With him to Whitehall, where I left him and went to Mr. Holmes to deliver him the horse of Dixwell’s that had staid there fourteen days at the Bell.  So to my Lord’s lodgings, where Tom Guy came to me, and there staid to see the King touch people for the King’s evil.  But he did not come at all, it rayned so; and the poor people were forced to stand all the morning in the rain in the garden.  Afterward he touched them in the Banquetting-house.

[This ceremony is usually traced to Edward the Confessor, but there is no direct evidence of the early Norman kings having touched for the evil.  Sir John Fortescue, in his defence of the House of Lancaster against that of York, argued that the crown could not descend to a female, because the Queen is not qualified by the form of anointing her, used at the coronation, to cure the disease called the King’s evil.  Burn asserts, “History of Parish Registers,” 1862, p. 179, that “between 1660 and 1682, 92,107 persons were touched for the evil.”  Everyone coming to the court for that purpose, brought a certificate signed by the minister and churchwardens, that he had not at any time been touched by His Majesty.  The practice was supposed to have expired with the Stuarts, but the point being disputed, reference was made to the library of the Duke of Sussex, and four several Oxford editions of the Book of Common Prayer were found, all printed after the accession of the house of Hanover, and all containing, as an integral part of the service, “The Office for the Healing.”  The stamp of gold with which the King crossed the sore of the sick person was called an angel, and of the value of ten