 The physician Sir Richard Blackmore praised William III and George I for abandoning "that superstitious and insignificant ceremony", which he believed was a "Popish" plot. The Glorious Revolution and subsequent abandonment of the idea of the divine right of kings rendered the royal touch unnecessary as means of proving monarch's legitimacy. Reports of Jacobite claimants curing scrofula by touch were rebuffed by a contributor to the General Evening Post: "The illustrious Royal Family now on the Throne despise such childish Delusions, such little pious Frauds, to prove their Divine Right to the Crown. They act upon noble Principles; they want no chicanery to support their Throne." The ceremony finally disappeared from the Book of Common Prayer in 1732.
