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he should do no injury to persons afflicted with the disorder
by not touching them." Queen Anne countenanced the
practice, however, towards the latter end of her reign. The
celebrated Dr. Johnson, who was born in 1709, was brought
from Lichfield to Westminster, when only two years of age*
to he touched by the Queen for the scrofulous evil, though
the ceremony was of no avail.†
Parish of St. John the Evangelist. The sketch of the proceedings of the Vestry
in Church matters would be incomplete without
a reference to the exercise of power by the
United Vestries in relation to the Church of St.
John the Evangelist. During the reigns of Edward III.
(1327) and Richard II. (1377) a chapel dedicated to St. John
the Evangelist had existed in Westminster. Mr. J. T. Smith,
in his "Antiquities of Westminster," 1807, refers to a contention
as to jurisdiction between the Abbot of St. Peter's
and the Dean and Canons of St. Stephen's, which difference
was settled by deed of compromise in 1394. In that deed the
chapel of St. John the Evangelist was specially reserved.
After a close examination of local details the author of the
valuable work just named (pp. 104 and 127) fixed the
position of the chapel as being to the south of the chapel of
St. Stephen, and on the site of Cotton Garden, close to the
Painted Chamber. The chapel, which was suppressed by
Edward VI. (1547), had an annual revenue of £1085 10s. 5d.
The present church may have derived its title from this
chapel.
By an Act passed in 10 Anne (1711-12) the appropriation
of the duties on coal towards the cost of erecting fifty new
churches in and near the Metropolis was authorised. The
Church of St. Mary-le-Strand was the first built under the
* Mrs. Piozzi, in her Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, says, "As Mr. Johnson
had a remarkable memory I asked him if he could remember Queen Anne?
'He had,' he said, 'a confused but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a
lady in diamonds and a long black hood.' "
† Mr. Murphy, in his biographical preface to Johnson's Works observes that
the child was "afterwards cut for the humour, and the under part of his face
was seamed and disfigured by the operation."