IN ENGLAND and Europe during the 1500s the liberty to grow long hair and a beard was a privilege mostly reserved for men of high birth, philosophers, or artists. At near mid-point in the century Francis I of France, Henry VIII of England, and Charles V of Spain all sported beards. But for most commoners the stern ways of the smooth-faced, traditionalistic older generation prevailed: while "facial shrubbery" might be appropriate for persons of exalted rank, on lesser mortals it was considered unseemly.

In France, men of the clergy who allowed hair to grow on their upper lip, chin, or neck were subject to a beard tax, and there was a law that obliged magistrates to keep their faces totally hair free. French judges often refused to hear the cases of men who arrived at court unshaven.

During the six-year reign of England's young Edward VI (Henry VIII's only son), any man found wearing a beard of more than three weeks' growth was liable to a fine of 40 shillings. In Elizabeth I's reign, beginning in 1558, a beard tax was introduced that varied according to the owner¹s age and social standing. The law turned out to be totally unenforceable and within a year Elizabeth had it repealed.

With the levy on facial hair removed, there began a veritable Golden Age of Beards. From William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon, Martin Frobisher and Francis Drake down to the lowliest of Elizabeth's subjects, whiskers became the fashion of the day. By 1583, when the Queen was 50 years old and in the 25th year of her reign, short hair and smooth faces for men had become a thing of the past.

In France during the 1600s, the mode in dress and personal adornment emanated from the court of Versailles, where the royal family set the example, and the courtiers normally followed suit. When Louis XIII found himself going prematurely bald at the age of 23, he took to wearing a long wig, and it was not long before the entire court eagerly complied. The courtiers were not so enthused a few years later when it was suggested that their facial hair should look more like the king's -- a rather droopy moustache and a tiny tuft of hair under the bottom lip. Seeing his subjects' reluctance to copy the royal example, Louis set up a temporary barbershop at court and personally shaved all their chins to match his own.

King James I of England (formerly James VI of Scotland), who succeeded Elizabeth in 1603 and reigned through the early years of English colonization in North America, had a long, frizzy, untrimmed beard and mustache. Neatly trimmed mustaches and pointed beards were the preference of contemporary figures like Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Richard Grenville, who organized the first colonizing expeditions to the New World and incidentally set the facial hair trend for several generations of new Americans.

Meanwhile, fanatic Puritans in England were shaving all the hair from their faces and cutting their head hair short and round -- barely reaching the ears -- to express their scorn of ringlets and pearls: a fashion statement that earned them the name of "Roundheads." The radical English politician and pamphleteer, William Prynne, considered long hair, lovelocks, and any kind of facial fuzz to be a royal decadence and a sin against God. In a lengthy diatribe entitled The Loathsomnesse of Long Haire Thomas Hall, the pastor of King's Norton, ranted that a man's hair is too long if he has to tie it up with strings or fillets to prevent it falling in the eyes while he works " . . . since the haire of the head is ordained by God for the covering of the head, not the face."

However, King Charles I (son of James I ), who succeeded to the English throne in 1625, perpetuated the hairy-face trend by adopting the neat and elegant "Vandyke" beard that we now see so often in the paintings of Sir Anthony Van Dyke, the great Flemish painter of that era. Also by Charles's time, there were a number of major fashion changes for the hair on top of the male head. The short locks of the century's first decade gave way in the 1620s to long, luxuriant, curled hair hanging well below the shoulders.