Note 485 — BOOK V.

Of Henry’s prudent accommodation to the times, a curious anecdote is related by Ordericus Vitalis, p. 815. When Serlo bishop of Sees met him on his arrival in Normandy, he made a long harangue on the enormities of the times, one of which was the bushyness of men’s beards which resembled Saracens’ rather than Christians’, and which he supposes they would not clip lest the stumps should prick their mistresses’ faces; another was their long locks. Henry immediately, to show his submission and repentance, submits his bushy honours to the bishop, who, taking a pair of shears from his trunk, trims his majesty and several of the principal nobility with his own hands.