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Reading Chinese in Oxford
Disfigured men, women and children, their necks misshapen by swelling lumps
andopenlesions,trampedintothecityfromalloverOxfordshireintheearlyhours
of 5 September 1687, making their way to Christ Church Cathedral. We know the
disease as scrofula, although, as antibiotics have made it rare to the point of being
non-existent for us, I had no idea what scrofula was until I looked it up. (It is a
form of tuberculosis that attacks the lymph glands in the neck.) They knew their
affliction as the King's Evil. They also knew that there was only one cure. They
had to be touched by a king. Whatever the faults of the crowned heads of Europe,
and they were many, they did not disregard their duty in this matter. Charles I, in
whose downfall John Selden played a part, had touched for the King's Evil. So did
his French nephew Louis XIV, his elder son Charles II and, last of all, his second
son, James II.
Word got out that James II was coming to Oxford that weekend to browbeat the
fellows of Magdalen College into accepting his preferred candidate as their new
president. The fellows of Magdalen had resisted his choice for five months, for-
cing James to descend into the political fray and come to Oxford to push his man
through-althoughthefellowswouldintheendsucceedinthwartingthekingafter
he left. It was a poor tactical move on his part. What was supposed to have been
a display of royal authority only tarnished his already wobbly reputation, further
tipping the scales against him. (What the anti-monarchists called the Glorious Re-
volution would force him off the throne and out of the country the following year.)
The disfigured victims of the King's Evil crowding into Christ Church that wet
Monday morning had no interest in monarchical politics. All they wanted was for
James to show up for the service and dispense his favour by touching them. Surely
that was not too much to ask of their king? And so he did, from eight to almost ten
that morning.
A late breakfast awaited him over at the Bodleian Library. Perhaps to mollify
himforMagdalenCollege'srefusaltobendtohiswill,theuniversitylaidonafeast
fitfor,yes,aking,consistingof111dishesandcosting£160.Eventodayonediner
couldn't run up a breakfast tab that high. The meal was laid out on a large table set
up in the Selden End, the western portion of the library, where Selden's magnifi-
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