In France, the denunciations of the clergy were as little heeded as in England. Louis VII., however, sacrificed his hair to save his conscience; he shaved himself as close as a monk, and disgusted his pleasure-loving queen, Eleanor of Guienne, by his denuded aspect and asceticism. Eleanor bestowed her favors upon another, was divorced, and subsequently gave her hand and dower—the fair provinces of Guienne and Poitou—to Henry, duke of Normandy, afterwards king of England—the first of the Plantaganets. In Henry’s reign the old Norman custom, of shaving the beard closely, was revived.
During the absence of Richard Cœur de Lion, closely trimmed hair and shaven faces were the fashion; but, towards the close of this reign, short beards and moustaches reappeared.
In king John’s reign curled hair was so much the fashion, that the beaux seldom appeared with any covering on their head, that their flowing locks might be everywhere admired. The king himself, and the nobles of his party, wore beard and moustaches, out of contempt, it is said, for the discontented barons. His effigy in Worcester Cathedral has the beard closely trimmed, and moustaches.
Curls and a shaven face, denote the gentlemen in the days of Henry III.; the ladies wear the hair turned up and confined in a caul.
Crispness of the hair and beard (which was curled with the nicest care) was the favourite fashion at the court of Edward Longshanks. His successor, as we may judge from the effigy at Gloucester, wore the beard carefully curled, and the hair cut square on the forehead, which hung in wavy ringlets below the ears. Can it be true that the beard of this wretched king suffered the indignity we read of in history? Did Maltravers order the king to be shaven with cold water from a dirty puddle, while on a journey near Carnarvon; and the poor king,
“Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,”
bursting into tears exclaim, “Here at least is warm water on my cheeks, whether you will or not.” Beards at that time were seldom worn but by aged persons, officers of state, and knights templars.
Edward III. on his tomb at Westminster, is figured with a noble beard, which would not have disgraced the chin of some old Greek in the heroic ages.
In Richard the Second’s reign, we notice the hair of the ladies caught up prettily in a gold fret or caul, the hair usually surmounted by some ornament in jewelry, in the form of a chaplet, as described by Chaucer: