The Beard during this century appears to have been usually worn by the aged only. The young knight has commonly neither beard nor moustache: indeed, this imberbed state of the Western cavaliers is made a reproach to them by the Saracens. The Sultan, we are told by Matthew Paris, under 1250, addressing his chiefs, in arms against the forces of St. Louis, exclaimed: "What rash madness excites these men to attack us and endeavour to deprive us of our inheritance, who have inhabited this noble country since the Flood? A certain motive, however slight, urges the Christians to covet the land which they call Holy: but what have they to do with Egypt? Unfit indeed are they to lord it over a land which is watered and enriched by the river sent from Paradise: beardless, shorn men, unwarlike and imbecile, more like women than men, what rash daring is this[361]!" For the arrangement of the beard of this time, see the effigies of King John and Henry III. (Stothard, Plates XI. and XXXI.), and Plate XXXIX. of the Painted Chamber. The fashion of the Hair differs considerably in the first and second portions of the century. In both it was cut short at the forehead: but in the first half it was allowed to fall in its natural flow to some length at the sides of the head and behind; while, in the second, it was most carefully arranged in large curls, which cover the ears, and give a strongly marked character to the monuments of this time. In the effigy of King John at Worcester, the side hair is cut sheer off just below the ear. In the figure of Prince John, the son of St. Louis, in the Abbey Church of St. Denis, the hair falls in a natural ringlet to the neck[362]. The large and formal curl of the later period is well shewn in the knightly sculpture from Norton Church, Durham (woodcut, No. 70). See also the statue of Henry III. (Stothard, Pl. XXXI.), and the series of monumental figures sculptured in 1263-4 by order of St. Louis, to perpetuate the memory of his ancestors entombed at St. Denis. (Guilhermy, pp. 218, 223, 225 and 228.) [Illustration: PLATE LXXX.]