Daniel Waldo.
Long before that American preachers had felt it necessary to “let fly” also; to denounce wig-wearing from their pulpits. The question could not be settled, since the ministers themselves could not agree. John Wilson, the zealous Boston minister, wore one, and John Cotton (see [here]); while Rev. Mr. Noyes preached long and often against the fashion. John Eliot, the noble preacher and missionary to the Indians, found time even in the midst of his arduous and incessant duties to deliver many a blast against “prolix locks,”—“with boiling zeal,” as Cotton Mather said,—and he labelled them a “luxurious feminine protexity”; but lamented late in life that “the lust for wigs is become insuperable.” He thought the horrors in King Philip’s War were a direct punishment from God for wig-wearing. Increase Mather preached warmly against wigs, calling them “Horrid Bushes of Vanity,” and saying that “such Apparel is contrary to the light of Nature, and to express Scripture,” and that “Monstrous Periwigs such as some of our church members indulge in make them resemble ye locusts that came out of ye Bottomless Pit.”
Rev. George Weeks preached a sermon on impropriety in clothes. He said in regard to wig-wearing:—
“We have no warrant in the word of God, that I know of, for our wearing of Periwigs except it be in extraordinary cases. Elisha did not cover his head with a Perriwigg altho’ it was bald. To see the greater part of Men in some congregations wearing Perriwiggs is a matter of deep lamentation. For either all these men had a necessity to cut off their Hair or else not. If they had a necessity to cut off their Hair then we have reason to take up a lamentation over the sin of our first Parents which hath occasioned so many Persons in our Congregation to be sickly, weakly, crazy Persons.”
Long “Ruffianly” or “Russianly” (I know not which word is right) hair equally worried the parsons. President Chauncey of Harvard College preached upon it, for the college undergraduates were vexingly addicted to prolix locks. Rev. Mr. Wigglesworth’s sermon on the subject has often been reprinted, and is full of logical arguments. This offence was named on the list of existing evils which was made by the general court: that “the men wore long hair like women’s hair.” Still, the Puritan magistrates, omnipotent as they were in small things, did riot dare to force the becurled citizens of the little towns to cut their long love-locks, though they bribed them to do so. A Salem man was, in 1687, fined l0s. for a misdemeanor, but “in case he shall cutt off his long har of his head into a sevill (civil?) frame, in the mean time shall have abated 5s. of his fine.” John Eliot hated long, natural hair as well as false hair. Rev. Cotton Mather said of him, in a very unpleasant figure of speech, “The hair of them that professed religion grew too long for him to swallow.” His own hair curled on his shoulders, and would seem long to us to-day.
Reverend John Marsh.
A climax of wig-hating was reached by one who has been styled “The Last of the Puritans”—Judge Samuel Sewall of Boston. Constant references in his diary show how this hatred influenced his daily life. He despised wigs so long and so deeply, he thought and talked and prayed upon them, until they became to him of undue importance; they became godless emblems of iniquity; an unutterable snare and peril.