In the reign of Elizabeth and of James I a beard and whiskers or mustache were universally worn. In the time of Charles I the general effect of beard and mustache was triangular, with the mouth in the centre, as in the portrait of Waller [here].
A beard of some form was certainly universal in 1620. Often it was the orderly natural growth shown on Winthrop’s face; a smaller tuft on the chin with a mustache also was much worn. Many ministers in America had this chin-tuft. Among them were John Eliot and John Davenport. The Stuarts wore a pointed beard, carefully trimmed, and a mustache; but the natural beard seems to have disappeared with the ruff. Charles II clung for a time to a mustache; his portrait by Mary Beale has one; but with the great development of the periwig came a smooth face. This continued until the nineteenth century brought a fashion of bearded men again; a fashion which was so abhorred, so reviled, so openly warred with that I know of the bequest of a large estate with the absolute and irrevocable condition that the inheritor should never wear a beard of any form.
The hammer cut was of the reign of Charles I. It was T-shaped. In the play, The Queen of Corinth, 1647, are the lines:—
“He strokes his beard
Which now he puts in the posture of a T,
The Roman T. Your T-beard is in fashion.”
The spade beard is shown [here]. It was called the “broad pendant,” and was held to make a man look like a warrior. The sugar-loaf beard was the natural form much worn by Puritans; by natural I mean not twisted into any “strange antic forms.” The swallow-tail cut (about 1600) is more unusual, but was occasionally seen.
“The stiletto-beard
It makes me afeard
It is so sharp beneath.
For he that doth place
A dagger in his face
What wears he in his sheath?”
An unusually fine stiletto beard is on the chin of John Endicott ([here]). It was distinctly a soldier’s beard. Endicott was major-general of the colonial forces and a severe disciplinarian. Shakespere, in Henry V, speaks of “a beard of the General’s cut.” It was worn by the Earl of Southampton (see [here]), and perhaps Endicott favored it on that account. The pique-devant beard or “pick-a-devant beard, O Fine Fashion,” was much worn. A good moderate example may be seen upon Cousin Kilvert, with doublet and band, in the print [here]. An extreme type was the beard of Robert Greene, the Elizabethan dramatist, “A jolly long red peake like the spire of a steeple, which he wore continually, whereat a man might hang a jewell; it was so sharp and pendent.”
Scotch Beard.