Valentine Greatrakes

Valentine Greatrakes (14 February 1628 – 28 November 1682), also known as "Greatorex" or "The Stroker", was an Irish faith healer who toured England in 1666, claiming to cure people by the laying on of hands.

Greatrakes was born on 14 February 1628, at Affane, County Waterford, Ireland. He was the son of William Greatrakes (c. 1600–1643) and Mary (died c. 1656), daughter of Sir Edward Harris, Chief Justice of Munster, who were English Protestants settlers. He went to the free-school at Lismore until he was 13 years of age and was designed for the college of Dublin. However, when the Irish Rebellion of 1641 broke out he and his mother fled into England, where he was received by his great uncle, Edmund Harris. After Harris died his mother placed him with John Daniel Getsius, a German minister, of Stoke Gabriel, in Devonshire.

After five or six years in England Greatrakes returned to his native country, which he found in a distracted state, and therefore spent a year in contemplation at the Castle of Cappoquin. In 1649 he was a lieutenant in Lord Broghill's regiment in the English Parliamentary army in Ireland, then campaigning in Munster against the Irish Royalists. In 1656, great part of the army being disbanded, so Greatrakes retired to Affine, his native place, and was made clerk of the peace for County Cork, Register for transplantation, and a Justice of the Peace. However he lost these positions after the Restoration.

He seemed to have been very religious; his outlook was grave but simple. He said himself, that ever since that year 1662 he had felt a strange impulse or persuasion that he had the gift of curing the King's evil (scrofula); and this suggestion became so strong, that he stroked several persons, and cured them.

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