William Laud
William Laud (
October 7 1573 -
January 10,
1645) was
Archbishop of Canterbury and a fervent supporter of
Charles I of England whom he encouraged to believe in the
Divine Right of Kings. Laud was born in
Reading, England, of comparatively low origins (a fact he was to remain sensitive of through his career) and 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, 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 the
Apostolic succession was unpopular in many quarters. In
1605, somewhat against his will, he obliged his patron,
Charles Blount, earl of Devonshire, by performing his marriage service--to a divorcée.
He continued to rise through the ranks, becoming Bishop of
St David's in
1622, 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 had to offer 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.
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.
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References
\n*the biography by Hugh Trevor-Roper,
Archbishop Laud, 1573-1645 ISBN 1842122029
External link
\n*An Online Biography
