The Anglo-Saxons brought their Beards with them which they preferred of
the forked shape, and this again might be either two-pronged, or
three-pronged, or plutonian and neptunian.
St. Augustine is figured with his Beard on his appearance to convert
these Islands in the sixth century. His followers must soon have shaved,
because a writer of the seventh century, complains that “the Clergy had
grown so corrupt as to be distinguished from the Laity less by their
actions than by their want of Beards.” The illustrious Alfred was so
careful of the Beards of his subjects, that he inflicted the then heavy
fine of twenty shillings on any one maliciously injuring the Beard of
another. The Danes who invaded this country were Bearded. Fosbrooke
says, some of them wore Beards with six forks, and history mentions
Sueno the fork-beard.[18]
Footnote 18:
Many princes have borne the title of Bearded—as the Greek Emperor
Constantine Pogonatus, Count Godfrey, the Emperor Barbarossa, and
Eberhard Duke of Wirtemberg in the reign of Maximilian, whose wisdom
might truly be said to have grown with his Beard, and on whom the
following verse was made:—
“Hic situs est cui _barba_ dedit cognomina Princeps,
Princeps Teutonici gloria magna soli.”
(Here is a Prince whose Beard gave his surname,
A Prince the glory of the land Almayne.)
During this period, the French monarchy was growing. Its first kings
held the Beard as sacred, and ornamented it with gold. Their subjects
were proud of it as marking them out to be free men in contradistinction
to the degenerate Roman population. Alaric touched the Beard of Clovis
as a solemn mode of confirming a treaty, and acknowledging Clovis as his
godfather. The Merovingian Dynasty were Bearded. Then came Charlemagne
who swore by his Beard, as did Otho the Great and Barbarossa, Emperors
of Germany, after him. The following story shows the faith of those
early times in the sacredness of this form of adjuration. A peasant, who
had sworn a false oath on the relics of two holy Martyrs, having taken
hold of his Beard, as further confirmation, heaven to punish him, caused
the whole to come off in his hand!
Charlemagne also enacted that any one who should call another red beard
or red-fox, should pay a heavy fine; a law explained by a prejudice
embodied in two German proverbs.[19]
Footnote 19:
Rothbart nie gut wart
Rothbart Schelmen art.
Of red beard no good heard
Red beard—a knave to be feared;
and carried to its climax in the anecdote of a Spanish nobleman, who,
having accused a man of some crime, and the latter being proved
innocent, exclaimed, “if he did not do it he was plotting it, for the
rascal has a red beard!” Those who need consolation under this calumny,
traceable probably to an old notion, derived from his name, that Judas
Iscariot had a red beard, I am fortunately able to refer to a sermon[20]
on that Arch-Traitor, full of wit, humor, pathos, and imagination, by
the celebrated Abraham St. Clara, where red beards are nobly vindicated,
and the following noted instances cited:—
Footnote 20:
Judas der Ertz. Schelm.
Several illustrious Romans,
The Emperor Barbarossa;
Hanquinus Rufus, King of the Goths;
Bishops Gaudentius and Gandulfius;
The Martyrs Dominicus, Maurinus, and Savinianus.
During the distractions to which Charlemagne’s empire was subject after
his decease, the Northmen appeared, and a band, under Rollo, having been
converted and settled in what is now Normandy, became known in English
History as the Normans; with whom an increasing intimacy having sprung
up in the reign of Edward the Confessor, (whose head was shewn from the
Bayeux tapestry,) a Norman party was gradually formed at court and
Norman customs, one of which was shaving, partially adopted. Harold, as
representative of the real old English party, wore his Beard as shown by
a cotemporary MSS. illuminator; but William the Conqueror, and most of
his followers, are figured only with a moustache and their back hair
close cropped or shaven. It was this _barbarous_ fashion that induced
Harold’s spies to report to their master that the invaders were an army
of Priests.
William is said to have attempted to compel the sturdy Saxons to shave,
but many of them left the kingdom rather than part with their Beards. In
this, as in other matters, Anglo-Saxon firmness ultimately conquered the
conquerors, and the Norman sovereigns gave in to the national custom. As
early as Henry I, that is _only 44 years from William’s landing_, we
learn that Bishop Serlo met that monarch on his arrival in Normandy, and
made a long harangue on the enormities of the times, especially long
hair and bushy Beards, which he said they would not clip, lest the
stumps should wound the ladies’ faces. Henry, with repentant obedience,
submitted his hairy honors to the Bishop, who with pious zeal, taking a
pair of shears from his trunk, trimmed king and nobles with his own
hand. This conduct of the Bishop is curiously illustrated by a
cotemporary decree of the Senate of Venice, of the year 1102, commanding
all long Beards to be cut off in consequence of a Bull of Pope Paschal
II, denouncing the vanity of long hair, founded on a misinterpretation
of 1st Corinthians, xii, 14,[21] which applies only to the hair of the
head. On this text a sermon might be written though scarcely preached,
which would “a tale unfold, would harrow up the soul.”[22]
Footnote 21:
A writer in Dickens’ Household Words says Pope Anacletus, (query 1st
or 2nd) was the first who introduced the custom of shaving.
Footnote 22:
In this and in other places I am obliged to leave under a veil of
obscure allusion, arguments of thrilling force, not only from ancient
but from our own history: matters not to be met with in ordinary
histories; but too abundant in the pages of satirists and moralists,
who were hardy enough to lash the prevalent follies and vices of the
times in which they lived.
The stout king Stephen wore his Beard, and a Saxon chronicler complains
that in the civil wars of his time, in order to extort the wealth of
peaceable people, they were “hung up by their Beards;” a proof the
latter were long and strong. Stephen’s cotemporary, Frederick the 1st of
Germany, to prevent quarrelling, laid a very heavy fine on any one who
pulled another’s Beard.
Henry II, is said to have had a vision in which all classes of his
subjects reproached him in his sleep for his tyranny and oppression. A
cotemporary MSS. illuminator, having fortunately designed several
cartoons, really much more expressive than some in the New Houses of
Parliament, from which we learn that the faces of all classes of the
people and of the Clergy then appeared as nature made them, I selected
one, representing the leaders of the distressed agriculturalists of that
remote period, because while it illustrated my subject, it seemed to
possess great interest for that patient and much enduring class. One
could almost imagine the stout fellow with the one-sided Saxon spade, to
be urging on the heroes with the pitchfork and scythe, nearly in the
words of Marmion,
“Charge, Sibthorp,[23] charge! On, Stanley, on!”
Footnote 23:
I trust my honest and uncompromising brother Beard will pardon the
liberty I have taken with his name. No one can be a more sincere
admirer than myself of the manly way in which he maintains his
opinions on all occasions, and the humorous kindness of disposition
which renders him beloved in private and in public. I should always
esteem him as a public man, were it only for his long and
single-handed fight against that economical iniquity—that suicidal tax
on prudence and foresight, and bounty on improvidence—the Fire
Insurance Duty!
Henry’s Queen Eleanor had been previously the wife of Louis VII, of
France, who having been persuaded by his Priests to shave off his Beard,
so disgusted Eleanor that she obtained a divorce.[24]
Footnote 24:
“She had,” says D’Israeli, “for her marriage dower the rich province
of Poitou and Guyenne; and this was the origin of those wars which for
300 years ravaged France, and cost the French three million of men.
All which probably had never occurred had Louis VII not been so rash
as to crop his head and shave his Beard, by which he became so
disgustful in the eyes of our Queen Eleanor.”
Richard the Lion-hearted was Bearded like a lion, and though he was so
absorbed in the Crusades that he did not redress, yet he acknowledged
the justice of the complaints of the celebrated Longbeard, “Earl of
London and King of the Poor,” who did honor to his Beard by resisting
oppression, and perished, after an heroic struggle, the victim of
cowardice and treachery. The monuments of Roger, Bishop of Sarum, and
Andrew, Abbot of Peterborough, shew that Bishops wore the Beard, and
Abbots and Monks shaved in this reign.
John had what was called “a Judas’ Beard,” of which his actions were
every way worthy. Fortunately, the bold Barons outbearded him, and Magna
Charta was the result. His son, Henry III, had a moderate Beard, and the
longest reign till George III. Edward I, shewed the Scots what a long
Beard could do with long shanks, and a long head to back it.[25] This
king has been called the English Justinian, both he and the Roman
Emperor being noted for improving the laws, and cherishing their Beards.
Edward the 2nd’s Beard, like his character, was more ornamental than
strong, and his reign is chiefly memorable for the composition of that
favorite old song quoted by Shakspeare, “’Tis merry in hall, when Beards
wag all!”
Footnote 25:
No true Scotchman would pardon me if I omitted to note that the brave
Wallace had “a most brave Beard.”
Edward the 3rd’s bold Beard spread terror in Scotland and France, and
that of his son, the Black Prince—young as he died—was an apt type of
his “prowess in the tented field.”
Richard the 2nd, with all his faults, was neither deficient in Beard nor
in courage—the latter shewn in his meeting with Wat Tyler, and his
defence against his assassins. Henry IV, the crafty Bolingbroke, had a
chin cover, in whose every curl lurked an intrigue, of which his son,
Henry V, who was made of other metal, was so ashamed, we presume, that
he wore in penitence a shaven chin throughout his ten years’ reign, as
may be seen by his monument in Westminster Abbey, the remains of which
still exist.
Shaving continued partially in fashion in Henry the 6th’s reign, who
himself in later life was Bearded like a Philosopher, accustomed to
moralize over the ups and downs of life, of which he had no common
share. Edward the 4th shaved out of foppery; as did that smooth-faced
rascal, Richard III, who “could smile and smile and be a villain.” Henry
the 7th shaved himself and fleeced his people.
As may be seen in MSS. illuminations, and as we read in Chaucer and
elsewhere, the majority of the people stuck to their Beards,
uninfluenced by the fluctuations of court fashions. The poet, who was
born in Edward the 3rd’s time, and died in Henry the 4th’s, speaks of
“the merchant’s forked Beard;” “the Franklin’s white as a daisy;” “the
shipman’s shaken by many a tempest;” “the miller’s red as a fox, and
broad as though it were a spade;” the Reeve’s close trimmed; the
Sompnour’s piled; and ends by a contemptuous allusion to the Pardonere
with his small voice:
“No Beard had he, nor never none should have,
As smooth it was as it were newe shave, &c.”
Henry VIII, as you may still see on many sign boards, for which his
bluff, bloated face is so well adapted, had his Beard close clipped.
Once he swore to Francis the 1st that he would never cut it till he had
visited the latter, who swore the same; and when long Beards had become
the fashion at the French Court, Sir Thomas Bulleyn was obliged to
excuse Henry’s bad faith, by alleging that the Queen of England felt an
insuperable antipathy to a bushy chin, which, from the known considerate
conduct of Henry to his wives, must have been a very plausible plea! Sir
T. Moore shaved previous to his imprisonment. His Beard being then
allowed to grow, he conceived such an affection for it, that before he
laid his head on the block he carefully put it on one side, remarking
“that it at least was guiltless of treason, and ought not to be
punished.”
Although Francis I, and his Court, cherished their Beards, the
Chancellor Duprat advised the imposition of a tax on the Beards of the
clergy, and promised the king a handsome revenue. The bishops and
wealthier clergy paid the tax and saved their Beards; but the poorer
ministers were not so fortunate. In the succeeding reign, the clergy
determined on revenge; so when Duprat (son of the Chancellor) was
returning in triumph from the council of Trent, to take possession of
the bishopric of Claremont, the dean and canons closed the brass gates
of the chancel, through which they were seen armed with shears and
razor, soap and basin, and pointing to the statutes, “de radendis
barbis.” Notwithstanding his remonstrances, they refused to induct him
unless he sacrificed his Beard, which was the handsomest of his time. He
is said to have retired to his castle, and died of vexation.
In the same reign, John de Morillers was also objected to by the Chapter
of Orleans; but the cunning fellow produced a letter from the king
stating, that the statutes must be dispensed with in his case, as his
majesty intended to employ him in countries where he could not appear
without a Beard.
At the court of the rival of Francis, Charles the 5th, who had himself a
right royal covering to his chin, lived John Mayo, his painter, a very
tall man, but with a Beard so long, that he could stand upon it; and in
which he took much pride, suspending it by ribbons to his button-hole.
Sometimes this mass of hair, by command of the Emperor, was unfastened
at table, and doors and windows being thrown open, the imperial mind
took intense delight in seeing it blown into the faces of his grimacing
courtiers. Another noted German Beard was that of a merchant of Braunau
in Bavaria, which was so long, that it would have draggled on the
ground, had it not been incased by its proud owner in a beautiful velvet
bag.[26]
Footnote 26:
Southey in “The Doctor” mentions the Beard of Dominico d’Ancona, as
the crown or King of Beards,
A Beard the most singular
Man ever described in verse or prose;
and of which Berni says, “that the Barber ought to have felt less
reluctance in cutting the said Dominico’s throat, than in cutting off
so incomparable a Beard.” But Southey is outdone by a story told by
Dr. Ehle in his work on the hair, where mention is made of two
seven-foot giants with Beards down to their toes, at the court of one
of the German sovereigns. They both fell in love with the same woman,
and their master decided that whichever should succeed in putting his
rival into a sack, should have the maiden. One of them sacked the
other after a long duel before the whole court, and married the girl.
That the pair lived happily afterwards, as the Novelists say, is
proved by their having as many signs of affection as there are in the
Zodiac; and it is worthy of remark, both physiologically and
astrologically, that the whole twelve were born under one sign,
Gemini.
The promising Edward the 6th died before his Beard developed; his sister
Mary’s husband had one of the true Spanish cut.