We found it adjoining the
market-place, and in front of a monument on which were depicted three
scenes connected with his childhood: the first showing him mounted on
his father's back listening to Dr. Sacheverell, who was shown in the act
of preaching; the second showed him being carried to school between the
shoulders of two boys, another boy following closely behind, as if to
catch him in the event of a fall; while the third panel represents him
standing in the market-place at Uttoxeter, doing penance to propitiate
Heaven for the act of disobedience to his father that had happened fifty
years ago. When very young he was afflicted with scrofula, or king's
evil; so his mother took him in 1712, when he was only two and a half
years old, to London, where he was touched by Queen Anne, being the last
person so touched in England. The belief had prevailed from the time of
Edward the Confessor that scrofula could be cured by the royal touch,
and although the office remained in our Prayer Book till 1719, the
Jacobites considered that the power did not descend to King William and
Queen Anne because "Divine" hereditary right was not fully possessed by
them; which doubtless would be taken to account for the fact that
Johnson was not healed, for he was troubled with the disease as long as
he lived.
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