KINGSDOWN, THOMAS PEMBERTON LEIGH, BARON (1793-1867)

This article appears in Volume V15, Page 817 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: KHA-KRI

KINGSDOWN, THOMAS PEMBERTON LEIGH, BARON (1793-1867) , the eldest son of Thomas Pemberton, a chancery barrister, was born in London on the 11th of February 1793. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1816, and at once acquired a lucrative equity practice. He sat in parliament for Rye (18311832) and for Ripon (18351843). He was made a king's counsel in 1829. Of a retiring disposition, he seldom took part in parliamentary debates, although in 1838 in the case of Stockdale v. Hansard he took a considerable part in upholding the privileges of parliament. In 1841 he accepted the post of attorney-general for the duchy of

Cornwall

CORNWALL

. In 1842 a relative, Sir Robert H. Leigh, left him a life

interest

INTEREST

in his Wigan estates, amounting to some 15,000 a year; he then assumed the additional surname of Leigh. Having accepted the chancellorship of the duchy of

Cornwall

CORNWALL

and a privy councillorship, he became a member of the judicial committee of the privy council, and for nearly twenty years devoted his energies and talents to the work of that body; his judgments, more particularly in prize cases, of which he took especial charge, are remarkable not only for legal precision and accuracy, but for their form and expression. In 1858, on the formation of Lord Derby's administration, he was offered the Great Seal, but declined; in the same year, however, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Kingsdown. He died at his seat, Lorry Hill, near Sittingbourne, Kent, on the 7th of October 1867. Lord Kingsdown never married, and his title became extinct.
See Recollections of Life at the Bar and in Parliament, by Lord Kingsdown (privately printed for friends, '868); The Times (8th of October 1867).
KING'S EVIL, an old, but not yet obsolete, name given to the scrofula, which in the popular estimation was deemed capable of cure by the royal

touch

TOUCH (derived through Fr. toucher from a common Teutonic and Indo-Germanic root, cf. " tug," " tuck," O. H. Ger. zucchen, to twitch or draw)

. The practice of " touching " for the scrofula, or " King's Evil," was confined amongst the nations of Europe to the two Royal Houses of England and France. As the monarchs of both these countries owned the exclusive right of being anointed with the pure chrism, and not with the ordinary sacred oil, it has been surmised that the common belief in the sanctity of the chrism was in some manner inseparably connected
with faith in the healing powers of the royal

touch

TOUCH (derived through Fr. toucher from a common Teutonic and Indo-Germanic root, cf. " tug," " tuck," O. H. Ger. zucchen, to twitch or draw)

. The kings both of France and England claimed a sole and special right to this supernatural

gift

GIFT (a common Teutonic word, cf. Ger. die Gift, gift, das Gift, poison, formed from the Teut. stem gab-, to give, cf. Dutch geven, Ger. geben; in O. Eng. the word appears with initial y, the guttural of later English is due to Scandinavian influence)

: the house of France deducing its origin from Clovis (5th century) and that of England declaring Edward t1, e Confessor the first owner of this virtue. That the Saxon origin of the royal power of healing was the popular theory in England is evident from the striking and accurate description of the ceremony in Macbeth (act vi. scene iii.). Nevertheless the practice of this rite cannot be traced back to an earlier date than the reign of Edward III. in England, and of St Louis (Louis IX.) in France; consequently, it is believed that the performance of healing by the touch emanated in the first instance from the French Crusader-King, whose miraculous powers were subsequently transmitted to his descendant and representative, Isabella of Valois, wife of Edward II. of England. In any case, Queen Isabella's son and

heir

HEIR (Lat. heres, from a root meaning to grasp, seen in heres or erus, master of a house, Gr. xeip, hand, Sans. hat ana, hand)

, Edward III., claimant to the French throne through his mother, was the first English king to order a public display of an attribute that had hitherto been associated with the Valois kings alone. From his reign dates the use of the " touch-piece," a gold medal given to the sufferer as a kind of talisman, which was originally the

angel

ANGEL

coin, stamped with designs of St Michael and of a three-masted ship.
The actual ceremony seems first to have consisted of the sovereign's personal act of washing the diseased flesh with water, but under Henry VII. the use of an ablution was omitted, and a regular office was

drawn

DRAWN

up for insertion in the Service Book. At the " Ceremonies for the Healing " the king now merely touched his afflicted subject in the presence of the court chaplain who offered up certain prayers and afterwards presented the touch-piece, pierced so that it might be suspended by a ribbon round the patient's neck. Henry VII.'s office was henceforth issued with variations from time to time under successive kings, nor did it disappear from certain editions of the Book of Common Prayer until the middle of the 18th century. The practice of the Royal Healing seems to have reached the height of its popularity during the reign of Charles II., who is stated on good authority to have touched over 1oo,000 strumous persons. So great a number of applicants becoming a nuisance to the Court, it was afterwards enacted that special certificates should in future be granted to individuals demanding the touch, and such certificates are occasionally to be found amongst old parish registers of the close of the 17th century. After the Revolution, William of Orange refused to touch, and referred all applicants to the exiled James II. at St Germain; but Queen Anne touched frequently, one of her patients being Dr Samuel Johnson in his infancy. The Hanoverian kings declined to touch, and there exists no further record of any ceremony of healing henceforward at the English court. The practice, however, was continued by the exiled Stuarts, and was constantly performed in Italy by James Stuart, " the Old Pretender," and by his two sons, Charles and Henry (Cardinal

York

YORK
YORK (HOUSE OF)
YORK, EDMUND OF
LANGLEY
- LANGLEY, SAMUEL PIERPONT (1834-1906)
, DUKE OF (1341-1402)
YORK, EDWARD
YORK, FREDERICK
AUGUSTUS
- AUGUSTUS (a name 1 derived from Lat. augeo, increase, i.e. venerable, majestic, Gr. Ee0avr6s)
, DUKE OF (1763-1827)
YORK, RICHARD, DUKE

). (H. M. V.)

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