which at times it is possible to move with a wisp, stands
firm against a lever; and men preferred to run the risk of damnation to
parting with the superfluity of their hair. In the time of Henry I.,
Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, found it necessary to republish the
famous decree of excommunication and outlawry against the offenders; but,
as the court itself had begun to patronise curls, the fulminations of the
Church were unavailing. Henry I. and his nobles wore their hair in long
ringlets down their backs and shoulders, and became a _scandalum magnatum_
in the eyes of the godly. One Serlo, the king's chaplain, was so grieved
in spirit at the impiety of his master, that he preached a sermon from the
well-known text of St. Paul before the assembled court, in which he drew
so dreadful a picture of the torments that awaited them in the other
world, that several of them burst into tears, and wrung their hair, as if
they would have pulled it out by the roots. Henry himself was observed to
weep. The priest, seeing the impression he had made, determined to strike
while the iron was hot, and pulling a pair of scissors from his pocket,
cut the king's hair in presence of them all. Several of the principal
courtiers consented to do the like, and for a short time long hair
appeared to be going out of fashion. But the courtiers thought, after the
first glow of their penitence had been cooled by reflection, that the
clerical Delilah had shorn them of their strength, and in less than six
months they were as great sinners as ever.

Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been a monk of Bec, in
Normandy, and who had signalised himself at Rouen by his fierce opposition
to long hair, was still anxious to work a reformation in this matter. But
his pertinacity was far from pleasing to the king, who had finally made up
his mind to wear ringlets. There were other disputes, of a more serious
nature, between them; so that when the archbishop died, the king was so
glad to be rid of him, that he allowed the see to remain vacant for five
years. Still the cause had other advocates, and every pulpit in the land
resounded with anathemas against that disobedient and long-haired
generation. But all was of no avail. Stowe, in writing of this period,
asserts, on the authority of some more ancient chronicler, "that men,
forgetting their birth, transformed themselves, by the length of their
haires, into the semblance of woman kind;" and that when th