In figure like a spade;
With which he will make
His enemies quake
To think their grave is made.”
In 1610, died Henry IV, of France, whose Beard is said “to have diffused over his countenance a majestic sweetness and amiable openness;” his son Louis XIII,[[33]] ascending the throne while yet a minor, the courtiers and others, to keep him in countenance, began to shave, leaving merely the tuft called a mouche or royal. Sully, however, the famous minister of Henry, stoutly refused to adopt the effeminate custom. Being sent for to court, and those about the king having mocked at his old-fashioned Beard, the duke indignantly turned to Louis and said, “Sire! when your father of glorious memory did me the honor to hold a consultation on grave and important business, the first thing he did was to order out of the room all the buffoons and stage dancers of his court!” About this time also, Marshal Bassompierre having been released from a long imprisonment, declared the chief alteration he found was, “that the men had lost their Beards and the horses their tails.”
Under our first Charles,[[34]] the sides of the face were often shaven, and the Beard reduced to the moustache, and a long chin-tuft, as in the portrait of that monarch, retaining however still some of its former gracefulness. As the contest grew hotter between Cavalier and Roundhead, doubtless some of the latter cropped chin as well as head; though others are said to have been so careful of their Beards, as to provide them with pasteboard night-caps to prevent the hairs being rumpled.
In one instance it was worn long for a sign, as we see by the following verse—
“This worthy knight was one that swore
He would not cut his Beard,
’Till this ungodly nation was