In 1684, the throng was such that six or seven of the sick were trampled to death.

James, in one of his progresses, touched eight hundred persons in the choir of the Cathedral of Chester.

The expense of the ceremony was little less than ten thousand pounds a year, and would have been much greater but for the vigilance of the royal surgeons, whose business it was to examine the applicants, and to distinguish those who came for the cure from those who came for the gold, [498] William had too much sense to be duped, and too much honesty to bear a part in what he knew to be an imposture.

"It is a silly superstition," he exclaimed, when he heard that, at the close of Lent, his palace was besieged by a crowd of the sick: "Give the poor creatures some money, and send them away." [499] On one single occasion he was importuned into laying his hand on a patient.

"God give you better health," he said, "and more sense." The parents of scrofulous children cried out against his cruelty: bigots lifted up their hands and eyes in horror at his impiety: Jacobites sarcastically praised him for not presuming to arrogate to himself a power which belonged only to legitimate sovereigns; and even some Whigs thought that he acted unwisely in treating with such marked contempt a superstition which had a strong hold on the vulgar mind: but William was not to be moved, and was accordingly set down by many High Churchmen as either an infidel or a puritan, [500] The chief cause, however, which at this time made even the most moderate plan of comprehension hateful to the priesthood still remains to be mentioned.