As soon as Charles II was restored to the throne at the end of May 1660 he began to hold public ceremonies at least twice a week in London at which he touched between 200 and 600 people who were ill with scrofula. This disease was also known as struma, or the king's evil (‘evil’ as in malady, the king's as he was thought to be able to cure it) or, as in the newspaper extract, it was sometimes just called ‘the evil’. It is an infection of the lymph nodes by the tubercular bacillus, known in the modern world as tubercular adenitis; its symptoms include painful and disfiguring abscesses and suppurations on the face and neck.

The ceremonies performed by Charles II were structured around prayers and passages from the New Testament, following a practice that had existed in different forms in England and France since the early Middle Ages. The purpose of these services was to cure the sick in an imitation of Christ, whom the Gospels recorded as having healed numerous people by his touch, including those who were blind or had leprosy, or were physically infirm. Just as Christ's cures were described as miraculous, so were those attributed to the royal touch.