 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 . 
