He conformed indeed to the established worship; but his was a local and occasional conformity.

For some ceremonies to which High Churchmen were attached he had a distaste which he was at no pains to conceal.

One of his first acts had been to give orders that in his private chapel the service should be said instead of being sung; and this arrangement, though warranted by the rubric, caused much murmuring, [495] It was known that he was so profane as to sneer at a practice which had been sanctioned by high ecclesiastical authority, the practice of touching for the scrofula.
This ceremony had come down almost unaltered from the darkest of the dark ages to the time of Newton and Locke.

The Stuarts frequently dispensed the healing influences in the Banqueting House.

The days on which this miracle was to be wrought were fixed at sittings of the Privy Council, and were solemnly notified by the clergy in all the parish churches of the realm, [496] When the appointed time came, several divines in full canonicals stood round the canopy of state.