William Laud
William Laud (
October 7 1573 –
January 10 1645) was
Archbishop of Canterbury and a fervent supporter of
King Charles I of
England, whom he encouraged to believe in
divine right. His support for Charles, absolute monarchy, and his persecuting of opposing views led to his
beheading in the midst of the
English Civil War. The beheading of Charles occurred four years later.
Laud was born in
Reading, Berkshire, of comparatively low origins, his father having been a
cloth merchant (a fact of which he was to remain sensitive throughout his career). He was educated at
Reading School and, through a White Scholarship,
St. John's College, Oxford.
On
April 5,
1601, he entered the Church, and his
Catholic tendencies and antipathy to
Puritanism, combined with his intellectual and organisational brilliance, soon made him a name. At that time, the
Calvinist party was strong in the Church, and Laud's affirmation of
Apostolic succession was unpopular in many quarters. In
1605, somewhat against his will, he obliged his patron,
Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devon, by performing his marriage service to a divorcée.
He continued to rise through the ranks of the clergy, becoming President of St John's College in 1611; Prebendary of Lincoln in 1614, and Archdeacon of Huntingdon in 1615. He was consecrated Bishop of
St David's in
1622, translated Bishop of
Bath and
Wells in
1626, and Bishop of
London in
1628. Thanks to patrons who included
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and the king himself, he reached the highest position the
Church of England had to offer, Archbishop of Canterbury, in
1633. At the same time, he was prominent in government, taking the king's line and that of
Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford in all important matters. It is believed that he wrote the controversial
Declaration of Sports issued by King Charles in 1633.
Laud served a the fifth Chancellor of
Trinity College,Dublin between
1633 and
1645.
The famous phrase "give great praise to God, and little Laud to the devil" is a warning to Charles attributed to the official court jester or "fool" Archie Armstrong.
Laud was a sincere Anglican and loyal Englishman, who must have been frustrated at the charges of
Popery levelled against him by the
Puritan element in the Church. Whereas Strafford saw the political dangers of Puritanism, Laud saw the threat to the
episcopacy. But the Puritans themselves felt threatened: the
Counter-Reformation was succeeding abroad, and the
Thirty Years' War was not progressing to the advantage of the Protestants. It was inevitable that in this climate, Laud's aggressive high church policy was seen as a sinister development.
Laud's policy was influenced by another aspect of his character: his desire to impose total uniformity on the Church. This, too, was driven by a sincere belief that this was the duty of his office, but to those of even slightly differing views it came as persecution. Perhaps this had the unintended consequence of garnerning support for the most implacable opponents of the Anglican compromise. In
1637,
William Prynne and two others were sentenced to mutilation (removal of ears and branding on both cheeks) for the crime of
seditious libel.
His intolerance towards the Presbyterians extended to
Scotland, where it led to the
Covenanter movement and the
Bishops' Wars. The
Long Parliament of
1640 accused him of
treason, resulting in his imprisonment in the
Tower of London, where he remained throughout the early stages of the
English Civil War. In the spring of
1644, he was brought to trial, but it ended without being able to reach a verdict. The parliament took up the issue, and eventually passed a
bill of attainder under which he was beheaded on
January 10,
1645 on
Tower Hill, notwithstanding being granted a royal pardon.
*
Hugh Trevor-Roper,
Archbishop Laud, 1573-1645 ISBN 1842122029
*
Royal Berkshire History: William Laud
