FASHIONS AT THE COURTS OF WILLIAM RUFUS AND HENRY I.
Source.—William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum Anglorum, ed. Stubbs, vol. ii., pp. 369, 530. (Rolls Series.)
Flowing hair was then in vogue, and extravagance of dress; and the fashion of shoes with curved points was then adopted; it was the ambition of the young gallants to rival women in suppleness of limb, in mincing gait, in easy gesture and uncovered bust. Effeminate and soft, they refused to be what birth had made them.
In the twenty-ninth year (of Henry I.) an event occurred in England which may appear strange to our long-haired dandies, who forget their sex and eagerly ape the fashions of women. An English knight, who was proud of his luxuriant hair, was terrified by the pricks of conscience into a dream, in which he thought a man was strangling him with his own locks. Shaken out of his sleep, he straightway cut off his too abundant curls. The fashion spread throughout England, and, since a recent shock commonly stirs the feelings, almost all knights tolerated without ado the reasonable cropping of their hair. But this decency did not last long; scarcely had a year passed, when all who claimed to be men of court lapsed to their earlier vice; they vied with women in the length of their hair, and when they had little, they wore false; forgetful, or rather ignorant, of the saying of the apostle, “If a man have long hair it is a shame unto him.”