In the twenty-ninth year (of Henry I.) an event occurred in England which may appear strange to our long-haired dandies, who forget their sex and eagerly ape the fashions of women. An English knight, who was proud of his luxuriant hair, was terrified by the pricks of conscience into a dream, in which he thought a man was strangling him with his own locks. Shaken out of his sleep, he straightway cut off his too abundant curls. The fashion spread throughout England, and, since a recent shock commonly stirs the feelings, almost all knights tolerated without ado the reasonable cropping of their hair. But this decency did not last long; scarcely had a year passed, when all who claimed to be men of court lapsed to their earlier vice; they vied with women in the length of their hair, and when they had little, they wore false; forgetful, or rather ignorant, of the saying of the apostle, “If a man have long hair it is a shame unto him.” THE CHARTER OF HENRY I. (1101). =Source.=--Richard, Prior of Hexham, _De Gestis regis Stephani_, ed. Howlett, vol. iii., p. 142. (Rolls Series--Chronicles of Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I.) Henry, by the grace of God king of the English, to all his faithful, as well French as English, of the whole of England, greeting. Know ye that I, by the mercy of God and by the common counsel of the barons of the realm of England, have been crowned king of the same realm. And because the realm was oppressed by unjust exactions, I, out of reverence for God and out of the love which I have towards all of you, grant first that the Holy Church of God be free, so that I will neither sell it nor put it to farm, nor, upon the death of archbishop or bishop or abbot, will I take aught of the lordship of the church or of the men, until a successor enter therein. And all the evil customs, with which the realm of England was unjustly oppressed, will I remove therefrom. Which evil customs I set forth in part here. If any of my barons or earls or others who hold of me shall die, his heir shall not redeem his land as he did in the time of my brother, but he shall relieve it with a lawful and just relief. In like manner the men of my barons shall relieve their lands from their lords by a lawful and just relief.