Still less can we wonder that wretches tortured by a disease over which natural remedies had no power should eagerly drink in tales of preternatural cures: for nothing is so credulous as misery.

The crowds which repaired to the palace on the days of healing were immense.
Charles the Second, in the course of his reign, touched near a hundred thousand persons.

The number seems to have increased or diminished as the king's popularity rose or fell.

During that Tory reaction which followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, the press to get near him was terrific.

In 1682, he performed the rite eight thousand five hundred times.