Don Sebastian Cobbarruvius gravely relates the following marvellous legend to show that nothing so much disgraced a Spaniard as pulling his beard: "A noble of that nation dying (his name Cid Lai Dios), a Jew, who hated him much in his lifetime, stole privately into the room where his body was laid out, and, thinking to do what he never durst while living, stooped down and plucked his beard; at which the body started up, and drawing out half way his sword, which lay beside him, put the Jew in such a fright that he ran out of the room as if a thousand devils had been behind him. This done, the body lay down as before to rest; and," adds the veracious chronicler, "the Jew after that turned Christian."--In the third of Don Quevedo's Visions of the Last Judgment, we read that a Spaniard, after receiving sentence, was taken into custody by a pair of demons who happened to disorder the set of his moustache, and they had to re-compose them with a pair of curling-tongs before they could get him to proceed with them! By the rules of the Church of Rome, lay monks were compelled to wear their beards, and only the priests were permitted to shave.[160] The clergy at length became so corrupt and immoral, and lived such scandalous lives, that they could not be distinguished from the laity except by their close-shaven faces. The first Reformers, therefore, to mark their separation from the Romish Church, allowed their beards to grow. Calvin, Fox, Cranmer, and other leaders of the Reformation are all represented in their portraits with long flowing beards. John Knox, the great Scottish Reformer, wore, as is well known, a beard of prodigious length. [160] In a scarce old poem, entitled, _The Pilgrymage and the Wayes of Jerusalem_, we read: The thyrd Seyte beyn prestis of oure lawe, That synge masse at the Sepulcore; At the same grave there oure lorde laye, They synge the leteny every daye. In oure manner is her [i.e. their] songe, Saffe, here [i.e. their] _berdys be ryght longe_, That is the geyse of that contre, _The lenger the berde the bettyr is he_; The order of hem [i.e. them] be barfote freeres. 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."