The ancient Britons shaved the chin and cheeks, but wore their
moustaches down to the breast. Our Saxon ancestors wore forked beards.
The Normans at the Conquest shaved not only the chin, but also the back
of the head. But they soon began to grow very long beards. During the
Wars of the Roses beards grew "small by degrees and beautifully less."

Queen Mary of England, in the year 1555, sent to Moscow four accredited
agents, who were all bearded; but one of them, George Killingworth, was
particularly distinguished by a beard five feet two inches long, at the
sight of which, it is said, a smile crossed the grim features of Ivan
the Terrible himself; and no wonder. But the longest beard known out of
fairy tales was that of Johann Mayo, the German painter, commonly called
"John the Bearded." His beard actually trailed on the ground when he
stood upright, and for convenience he usually kept it tucked in his
girdle. The emperor Charles V, it is said, was often pleased to cause
Mayo to unfasten his beard and allow it to blow in the faces of his
courtiers.--A worthy clergyman in the time of Queen Elizabeth gave as
the best reason he had for wearing a beard of enormous length, "that no
act of his life might be unworthy of the gravity of his appearance."

Queen Elizabeth, in the first year of her reign, made an abortive
attempt to abolish her subjects' beards by an impost of 3s. 4d. a year
(equivalent to four times that sum in these "dear" days) on every beard
of more than a fortnight's growth. And Peter the Great also laid a tax
upon beards in Russia: nobles' beards were assessed at a rouble, and
those of commoners at a copeck each. "But such veneration," says Giles
Fletcher, "had this people for these ensigns of gravity that many of
them carefully preserved their beards in their cabinets to be buried
with them, imagining perhaps that they should make but an odd figure in
their grave with their naked chins."