Lovelock (hair)

People such as Francis Higginson—Salem, Massachusetts's first minister—"reported [in his 1630 book New-Englands Plantation] speculation that the style of wearing one long lock of hair among fashionable young men in England was conscious imitation of the asymmetrical Powhatan male cut.

After learning this Purchas, like Prynn and Williams, became morally inflamed by the American theory of origin, calling it "a faire unlovely generation of the Love-locke, Christians imitating Salvages, and they the Divell."

This was partly due to the supposed devil-worship of Indians but mainly because the set of assumptions about human nature and its heritability, that attend objections on what are now recognized as racist grounds, had not yet fully developed by the early 17th century.

Prynne stated that for men to wear their hair long was "unseemly and unlawful unto Christians", while it was "mannish, unnatural, impudent, and unchristian" for women to cut it short.

He related the story of a nobleman who was dangerously ill, and who, on his recovery, "declared publicly his detestation of his effeminate, fantastic lovelock, which he then sensibly perceived to be but a cord of vanity, by which he had given the Devil holdfast to lead him at his pleasure, and who would never resign his prey as long as he nourished this unlovely bush", and so he ordered the barber to cut it off.