It did not remain popular for any length of time, the razor everywhere keeping down its growth.
The Gunpowder Conspirators, from a print published immediately after the discovery. Shows the Beards in Fashion in 1605.
Sir Walter Scott's great grandsire was called "Beardie." He was an ardent Jacobite, and made a vow that he would never shave his beard until the Stuarts were restored. "It would have been well," said the novelist, "if his zeal for the vanished dynasty had stopped with letting his beard grow. But he took arms and intrigued in their cause, until he lost all he had in the world, and, as I have heard, ran a narrow risk of being hanged, had it not been for the interference of Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth." Sir Walter refers to him in the introduction to Canto VI. of "Marmion":—
"With amber beard and flaxen hair,
And reverend apostolic air.
Small thought was his, in after time
E'er to be pitched into a rhyme.
The simple sire could only boast
That he was loyal to his cost;