What doth invest a bishop’s breast,
But a milk-white spreading hair?
Which an emblem may be of integrity
Which doth inhabit there.
But oh, let us tarry for the beard of King Harry,
That grows about the chin,
With his bushy pride, and a grove on each side,
And a champion ground between.
“Barnes in the defence of the Berde” is another curious piece of verse, or rather of arrant doggrel, printed in the 16th century. It is addressed to Andrew Borde, the learned and facetious physician, in the time of Henry VIII, who seems to have written a tract against the wearing of beards, of which nothing is now known. In the second part Barnes (whoever he was) says: