Hair. miliar to all from engravings. After this a tax waâ placed upon beards, graduated ac cording to the owner's position. In the days of the beardless Edward VI. we read that "the Sheriff of Canterbury and another paid their dues for wearing beards, 35. and 4d. and is. and 8d." In Mary's reign lawyers seem to have been very par ticular about their personal appearance; to check waste of time over their long beards an order was issued by the Inner Temple "that no fellow of that house would wear his beard above three weeks' growth, on pain of forfeiting twenty shillings." The last Tudor tried to extend this scheme of raising money out of hair, and so we read that in the first year of Elizabeth every beard above a fortnight's growth was taxed at three shillings and six pence. This seems unreasonable when her majesty herself was so fond of the unnatural that at one time she had no less than eighty attires of false hair. The law, however, was too absurd to be enforced. Peter the Great of Russia also thought that taxing beards would be a good way of increasing the revenue. The duty he im posed was a rouble for a nobleman; a com moner had to pay a copec for the inestimable privilege of keeping his chin covered by nature. The imposition of this tax is thus described by Dean Stanley in his History of the Greek Church: "Most serious of all Peter's changes was his endeavor to as similate his countrymen to the West by for bidding the use of the beard. The beard was one of the fundamental characteristics of the ancient Eastern faith. Michael Cerularius had laid it down in the eleventh century as one of the primary differences between the Greek and the Latin Church. To shave the beard was pronounced by the Council of Moscow in the seventeenth century 'a sin which even the blood of the martyrs could not expiate.' It was defended it still is defended, by texts of scripture, by
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grave precedents, by ecclesiastical history. Even Peter, with all his energy, quailed be fore the determined opposition. The nobles and gentry, after a vain struggle, gave way and were shaved. But the clergy and the peasantry were too strong for him. Flow ing locks and magnificent beards are still even in the established church, the distin guished glory of the clerical order. To the peasant, a compromise was permitted. Many when compelled to be shaved yet kept their beards to be buried with them, fearing lest, without them, they should not be recog nized at the gate of Heaven; and finally a tax was substituted, of which the token of receipt was a coin stamped with a nose, mouth and moustache, and a bushy beard; and now throughout the ranks of conformity the shaven beard is nowhere to be seen." According to Bingham the fourth Council of Carthage enacted that a clergyman shall neither indulge in long hair, nor shave his beard, but Bellarmine and others contend that the word for "shave" should be omitted from this canon, and they thus bring it into harmony with the practice of the Roman Church. In Ireland, by the Brehon law, a heavy fine had to be paid by any one who maliciously shaved the false locks of a poet, or of a scholar, or of a show girl, or who cut off the eye lashes, or the hair of the brow, or the beard or whiskers of a man. Robbing a man of his beard, among the Saxons, according to Alfred's laws, was punishable by a fine of twenty shillings; he who shaved a priest against his will was mulcted in thirty shillings: while binding the ecclesiastic, as well as shaving him, raised the penalty to two pounds. It has been held in one of the lower courts that the captain and crew of a vessel on the high seas have no right to permit or excite old Neptune to shave a passenger, or im merse him in a tub of water, contrary to his will. (9. THE GREEN BAG. 447.)
