COURTIER.--Good Captain Voice,
It shall, and teach you manners; I have yet
No ague, I can look upon your buff,
And punto beard, and call for no strong waters."
"It is difficult to ascertain," says Repton, "when the custom of pulling
the nose superseded that of pulling the beard, but most probably when
the chin became naked and close shaven, affording no longer a handle for
insult." In the reign of James II., William Cavendish, Earl of
Devonshire, paid L30,000 for offering this insult to a person at Court.
An earlier instance of pulling the nose may be found in Ben Jonson's
_Epicaene, or the Silent Woman_, Act iv. sc. 5.
In "Aubrey's Letters" is an allusion to wiping the beard. "Ralph Kettle,
D.D.," we read, "preached in St Mary's Church at Oxford, and, in
conclusion of a sermon, said, 'But now I see it is time for me to shutt
up my booke, for I see the doctors' men come in wiping their beards from
the ale-house' (he could from the pulpit plainly see them, and 't was
their custome to go there, and, about the end of the Sermon, to return
to wayte on their masters).
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