William Laud

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

George Abbot
SuccessorWilliam Juxon
Orders
Ordination5 April 1601 (1601-04-05)
Consecration18 November 1621 (1621-11-18)
by George Montaigne
Personal details
Born(1573-10-07)7 October 1573
Died10 January 1645(1645-01-10) (aged 71)
Tower Hill, London, England
BuriedSt John's College, Oxford
EducationReading School
Alma materSt John's College, Oxford
Signature's signature
Sainthood
Feast day10 January
Venerated inAnglican Communion

William Laud (LAWD; 7 October 1573 – 10 January 1645) was a bishop in the Church of England. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Charles I in 1633, Laud was a key advocate of Charles I's religious reforms; he was arrested by Parliament in 1640 and executed towards the end of the First English Civil War in January 1645.

Laud believed in episcopalianism, or rule by bishops. "Laudianism" was a reform movement that emphasised liturgical ceremony and clerical hierarchy, enforcing uniformity within the Church of England, as outlined by Charles. Its often highly ritualistic aspects prefigure what are now known as high church views.

In theology, Laud was accused of

Puritan clerics and laymen as a formidable and dangerous opponent. His use of the Star Chamber to persecute opponents such as William Prynne
made him deeply unpopular.

Early life

Laud was born at

president of St John's College in 1605.[4]

Laud was ordained deacon on 4 January 1601 and priest on 5 April the same year. On 4 May 1603, he was one of the university proctors for the year.[4]

Under James I

When Buckeridge left St John's in 1611, Laud succeeded him as president, but only after a hard patronage struggle reaching high circles at court. The rival candidate,

John Rawlinson, was chaplain to Lord Ellesmere, who was both chancellor of the university and Lord Chancellor of England. Laud was chaplain to Richard Neile, who was Clerk of the Closet. Eventually, King James brushed aside irregularities in the election, settling matters in Laud's favour.[5]

Laud became Dean of Gloucester in 1616. At Gloucester Cathedral he began ceremonial innovations with the communion table.[6] By local custom, the table stood in the middle of the choir, as was then usual in a parish church, rather than at the east end as was typical of cathedrals. Laud believed he had the king's blessing to renovate and improve the run-down building, but he offended his bishop, Miles Smith.[4]

Neile was Laud's consistent patron. Neile sought, but could not obtain, Laud's appointment as Dean of Westminster, a post that John Williams retained. But at the end of 1621, and despite the king's view of Laud as a troublemaker, Laud received the relatively unimportant see of St Davids.[5]

Laud became a confidant of

John Preston as religious adviser to the duke, a change that became clear around December 1624.[8]

Under Charles I

Stained glass windows in the Chapter House, Canterbury Cathedral, depicting Henry IV, Henry VIII, Thomas Cranmer and Laud

1625 to 1628

Laud ascended rapidly to a position of influence in the period 1626 to 1628, advancing not alone but with a group of like-minded clerics who obtained bishoprics.[9] In 1626 he was translated from St David's to be Bishop of Bath and Wells[1] and in September that year he took the court position of Dean of the Chapel Royal, vacant by the death of Lancelot Andrewes. A few years later, in 1633, he became Archbishop of Canterbury, when George Abbot died.[4] He immediately changed the Chapel services to privilege prayer over preaching, since King Charles's views were the opposite of his father's.[10]

Bishop of London and "Thorough"

In July 1628 Laud was translated from

Bath and Wells to become Bishop of London, in moves that followed on from the death of Andrewes. After this breakthrough in church politics, it becomes meaningful to define "Laudians" or "Lauders" as his followers.[11]

On the political stage, the

Queen Henrietta Maria.[17] Cottington observed that Laud could not keep his temper in Council meetings, and by 1637 Laud found he could not follow Wentworth in imagining their push for rigid policies would succeed.[18]

Archbishop of Canterbury

Altar, c. 1635, the centre of dispute between Puritans and Laudians, possibly consecrated by Laud himself

Laud was almost 60 years old when he became archbishop and, having waited for a decade to replace George Abbot, was no longer prepared to compromise on any aspect of his policy.

William Bray and Matthew Weeks.[20][21] The operations of the censors, including William Haywood who joined them, became a focus of the Long Parliament as soon as it was convened in November 1640, and Laud ultimately had to answer for Haywood at his own trial.[22][23]

Whereas Wentworth (who became the Earl of Strafford in early 1640) saw the political dangers of Puritanism, Laud saw the Calvinist movement's threat to the

episcopacy. But the Puritans themselves felt threatened: the Counter-Reformation was succeeding abroad and Protestants were not winning the Thirty Years' War. In this climate, Laud's high church policy could be seen as sinister. A year after Laud's appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury, the ship Griffin left for America, carrying religious dissidents such as Anne Hutchinson, the Reverend John Lothropp and the Reverend Zechariah Symmes
.

Laud's desire to impose uniformity on the Church of England was driven by a belief that this was his office's duty, but his methods seemed persecution to those of differing views. Thus, they had the

Henry Burton, and had their ears cropped and faces branded. Prynne reinterpreted the "SL" ("Seditious Libeller") branded on his forehead as "Stigmata Laudis". Laud also moved to silence his critic among the bishops, John Williams, who was convicted of various offences in Star Chamber. Contrary to Laud's expectation, Williams refused to resign as Bishop of Lincoln, and the Lords forced his release, after which Williams supported the impeachment
of both Strafford (Wentworth) and Laud. Williams specifically urged the king not to commute Strafford's death sentence, and he was executed in 1641, months before Charles I promoted Williams to Archbishop of York (only to be re-imprisoned by Parliament and then join the King in Yorkshire upon his release).

Toward the end of his life, Charles I admitted that he had put too much trust in Laud, and allowed his "peevish humours" and obsession with points of ritual to inflame divisions within the Church: he warned his son not to rely on anyone else's judgment in such matters. Laud, on his side, could not forgive the king for allowing Strafford's execution and dismissed his royal master as "a mild and gracious Prince, that knows not how to be or be made great".[24]

Trial and execution

Etching by Wenceslaus Hollar, Laud being tried for treason, with several people present labelled

The Long Parliament of 1640 accused Laud of treason and, in the Grand Remonstrance of 1641, called for his imprisonment.[25] Laud was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he remained throughout the early stages of the English Civil War. Apart from a few personal enemies like William Prynne (and possibly Archbishop Williams), Parliament showed little eagerness to proceed against Laud; given his age (68 in 1641), most members would probably have preferred to leave him to die of natural causes. In the spring of 1644, he was brought to trial which ended without a verdict: as with Strafford, it proved impossible to point to any specific action seen as treasonable.

Parliament took up the issue and eventually passed a

Tower Hill on 10 January 1645, notwithstanding being granted a royal pardon.[26] Laud was buried in the chapel of St John's College, Oxford,[1] his alma mater
.

Legacy

Laud is

commemoration on 10 January.[28]

His collected works in seven volumes were published between 1847 and 1860 in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology.[1]

Emeritus Professor at Cambridge,

Puritans, in 1980 published this rebuke of Laud in his book on the decades until 1625: "the greatest calamity ever visited upon the English Church".[29]

In September 2016, following

named their newest students' division Laud House after him.

The pun "give great praise to the Lord, and little Laud to the devil" ("laud" meaning, "praise", from the Latin word "laudere") is a joke attributed to Archibald Armstrong, Charles's court jester; Laud was known to be touchy about his diminutive stature.

See also

References

Notes

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d e Yorke 1911.
  2. ^ Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714 Labdon-Ledsam
  3. ^ McClure 1853, pp. 134–137.
  4. ^ a b c d Gardiner 1892.
  5. ^ a b Milton 2009.
  6. ^ Platten & Woods 2012, p. 44.
  7. ^ Wadkins 2008.
  8. ^ Moore 2007, p. 146.
  9. ^ Towers 2003, p. 190.
  10. ^ Colclough 2003, p. 199.
  11. .
  12. .
  13. .
  14. .
  15. ^ David Masson (1859). The life of John Milton: narrated in connexion with the political, ecclesiastical, and literary history of his time. Macmillan and co. p. 527.
  16. .
  17. .
  18. ^ Sharpe 1992, p. 142.
  19. ^ Trevor-Roper 1962, p. 42.
  20. ^ Sharpe 1992, p. 648.
  21. ^ Cooper 1885.
  22. .
  23. ^ Goodwin 1891.
  24. ^ Trevor-Roper 1962, p. 409.
  25. ^ Gardiner, Samuel Rawson, ed. (1906). "The Grand Remonstrance, with the Petition accompanying it". The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625–1660. Oxford University Press.
  26. ^ Wedgwood 1958, pp. 376–378.
  27. ^ "The Calendar". The Church of England. Retrieved 27 March 2021.
  28. ^ "William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1645". The Episcopal Church. Retrieved 19 July 2022.
  29. .

Sources

External links

Political offices
Preceded byas Lord High Treasurer First Lord of the Treasury
1635–1636
Succeeded byas Lord High Treasurer
Church of England titles
Preceded by Dean of Gloucester
1616–1621
Succeeded by
Preceded by
Bishop of St David's

1621–1626
Succeeded by
Preceded by Bishop of Bath and Wells
1626–1628
Succeeded by
Preceded by Bishop of London
1628–1633
Succeeded by
Preceded by
George Abbot
Archbishop of Canterbury
1633–1645
Vacant
Title next held by
William Juxon
Academic offices
Preceded by
Chancellor of the University of Oxford

1630–1641
Succeeded by
Preceded by President of St John's College, Oxford
1611–1621
Succeeded by
Preceded by Chancellor of the University of Dublin
1633–1645
Succeeded by
The Marquess of Ormonde