The word “peak” was constantly used for a beard, and also the words “spike” and “spear.” A barber is represented in an old play as asking whether his customer will “have his peak cut short and sharp; or amiable like an inamorato, or broad pendant like a spade; to be terrible like a warrior and a soldado; to have his appendices primed, or his mustachios fostered to turn about his eares like ye branches of a vine.”
A broad square-cut beard spreading at the ends like an open fan is the “cathedral beard” of Randle Holme, “so called because grave men of the church did wear it.” It is often seen in portraits. One of these is shown [here].
Dr. William Slater. Cathedral Beard.
In the Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, 1731, she writes of her grandfather, a Turkey-merchant:—
“He was very nice in the Mode of his Age—his Valet being some hours every morning in Starching his Beard and Curling his Whiskers during which Time a Gentleman whom he maintained as Companion always read to him upon some useful subject.”
So we may believe they really “starched” their beards, stiffened them with some dressing. Taylor, the “Water Poet” (1640), says of beards:—
“Some seem as they were starched stiff and fine
Like to the Bristles of some Angry Swine.”