Before the period of the Conquest, ecclesiastics were hardly distinguishable from the laity except by the tonsure; and of this they seem to have been partly ashamed, for they concealed it, to the best of their ability, by brushing the long hair around it, so as to cover the distinctive mark. It was only the great dignitaries who wore beards: had a poor priest ventured to carry one on his face, he would have had the one pulled and the other slapped by his ecclesiastical superiors. The inferior clergy cared nothing about the matter till beards were interdicted, as far as _they_ were concerned; and when the Council of Limoges, in 1031, decreed that the wearing of the beard was to be entirely optional, all concerned lost all concern in the question. Desire had only fastened itself upon what was forbidden. As for the more dignified clergy of the period, they were the most splendid dressers of the day; and the greatest “dandies” were those who officiated at the altar. No censure directed against their extravagance in this respect had any effect upon them. It was only when the reproof seemingly came from Heaven that they cared for it; as in the case of the young soldier in the army of Stephen, who was intensely vain of the locks which fell from his crown to his knees, and which he suddenly cut off close to the roots, in consequence of dreaming that the devil was strangling him with his own luxuriant ringlets. The dream did not cure other fops. In the days of King John, our excellent fathers actually curled their hair with crisping irons, and bound their locks with fillets, like girls. They went bareheaded lest the beauty of their curls should be disturbed by a cap; and they were not at all the sort of men that we should suspect of having wrung Magna Charta from the King;—that Magna Charta the original copy of which once fell into the hands of a tailor, who was cutting it up into other measures for men, when it was rescued, not without difficulty, and consigned to its present safe custody in the British Museum.