THE KINGS OF ENGLAND;

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3297, 16 August 1911, Page 7

THE KINGS OF ENGLAND;

- BEARDED AND : BAItEFACED. • It was often remarked at tli© accession of Edward VII. that be was the first hoarded King for nearly three hundred years.. The ill-fated King Charles I. was his predecessor in this respect, and he came to the Throne in 1625, whereas the late King succeeded his mother in 1901. Charles was the last of the Kings for. a every. long time to represent the Elizabethan or Shakespearean fashion of the pointed heard and to wear his own hair on his head. HENRY VIII.’S BEARD. Cromwell, the uncrowned King .of England, certainly wore no wig like the Jong line of his successors; hut, though he wore his own hair, he wore it pretty long. diaries 11. .wore a tremendous wig, curled in/ a hundred ringlets, but the only hair on his face was a- slight moustache., . None of has successors until Edward VII. boasted even that. Both beards and moustaches went clean out of fasliion, and James 11., William 111., all the Georges, and William IV. were just as clean-shaven as all the rest of their masculine subjects. There was a time when a beard had not been seen in England within living memory! In wearing a beard Charles I..followed the example of his father James, and, as he was a Scottish before he was an English King, he probably followed the fashion/ of his predecessors in the northern 'kingdom, for he was preceded by two Queens and a boy King, and had no precedent in this respect to follow, even if he had desired one. Henry VIII., nearly a hundred years before James Ids time, 'had been as much an innovator in respect to whiskers as Edward VII. was; for, like our late King, this much-married monarch could look back upon, several barefaced predecessors without a break, for none of the Kings from Henry V. to Henry VII wore the least lxair upon their faces.

BAREFACED GEORGES. Prior to Henry V.’s time, however, beards might be said to be almost the rule; and, indeed, from, William. 1., in 1066, to tlie death of Henry IV., in 1413, no King at on the English throne who was clean-shaven. The Conqueror and his two sous and successors were content with a. moustache only, as were Henry 11. and. Richard 11. ; but- Richard the Lion-hearted would seem to have made the beard fashionable, for his brother John, Henry 111., and the first three Edwards entirely gave the razor the go-by. Thus, though George V is the first of his name to wear a beard, Edward VII. was only following the example of bis most famous predecessors. _ Thus out of the thirty-three Kings who have ruled in England, the beardwearers and the clean-shaven almost provide a tie, for there are thirteen of tl'c former and fourteen of the lattei. Six Kings wore moustaches.