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Saxons.
The Anglo-Saxons brought their Beards with them
which they preferred of the forked shape, and this again
might he either two-pronged, or three-pronged, or pluto-
nian and neptunian.
St. Augustine is figured with his Beard on his appear-
ance to convert these Islands in the sixth century. His
followers must soon have shaved, because a writer of the
seventh century, complains that " the Clergy had grown
so corrupt as to be distinguished from the Laity less by
their actions than by their want of Beards." The illus-
trious Alfred was so careful of the Beards of his subjects,
that he inflicted the then heavy fine of twenty shillings on
any one maliciously injuring the Beard of another. The
Danes who invaded this country were Bearded. Eosbrooke
says, some of them wore Beards with six forks, and history-
mentions Sueno the fork-beard.*
During this period, the French monarchy was growing.
Its first kings held the Beard as sacred, and ornamented
* Many princes have bome the title of Bearded—as the Greek
Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, Count Godfrey, the Emperor
Barbarossa, and Eberhard Duke of Wirtemberg in the reign of
Maximilian, whose wisdom might truly be said to have grown with
his Beard, and on whom the following verse was made:—
" Hie situs est cui harha dedit cognomina Princeps,
Princeps Teutonici gloria magna soli."
(Here is a Prince whose Beard gave his surname,
A Prince the glory of the land Almayne.)
