William Laud
George Abbot | |
---|---|
Successor | William Juxon |
Orders | |
Ordination | 5 April 1601 |
Consecration | 18 November 1621 by George Montaigne |
Personal details | |
Born | Reading, Berkshire, England | 7 October 1573
Died | 10 January 1645 Tower Hill, London, England | (aged 71)
Buried | St John's College, Oxford |
Education | Reading School |
Alma mater | St John's College, Oxford |
Signature | |
Sainthood | |
Feast day | 10 January |
Venerated in | Anglican 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
Early life
Laud was born at
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,
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
Under Charles I
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
On the political stage, the
Archbishop of Canterbury
This section needs additional citations for verification. (January 2018) |
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.
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
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
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
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
Legacy
Laud is
His collected works in seven volumes were published between 1847 and 1860 in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology.[1]
Emeritus Professor at Cambridge,
In September 2016, following
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
- ^ a b c d e Yorke 1911.
- ^ Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714 Labdon-Ledsam
- ^ McClure 1853, pp. 134–137.
- ^ a b c d Gardiner 1892.
- ^ a b Milton 2009.
- ^ Platten & Woods 2012, p. 44.
- ^ Wadkins 2008.
- ^ Moore 2007, p. 146.
- ^ Towers 2003, p. 190.
- ^ Colclough 2003, p. 199.
- ISBN 978-0-470-99889-2.
- ISSN 0950-3471.
- ISSN 0264-2824.
- ISBN 978-0-521-52199-4.
- ^ 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.
- ISBN 978-0-521-06598-6.
- ISBN 978-0-415-26739-7.
- ^ Sharpe 1992, p. 142.
- ^ Trevor-Roper 1962, p. 42.
- ^ Sharpe 1992, p. 648.
- ^ Cooper 1885.
- ISBN 978-1-86064-110-7.
- ^ Goodwin 1891.
- ^ Trevor-Roper 1962, p. 409.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Wedgwood 1958, pp. 376–378.
- ^ "The Calendar". The Church of England. Retrieved 27 March 2021.
- ^ "William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1645". The Episcopal Church. Retrieved 19 July 2022.
- ISBN 978-0198200536.
Sources
- Cooper, Thompson (1885). Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co. . In
- Gardiner, Samuel Rawson (1892). Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 32. London: Smith, Elder & Co. . In
- Goodwin, Gordon (1891). Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney (eds.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 25. London: Smith, Elder & Co. . In
- Colclough, David, ed. (2003). John Donne's Professional Lives. Studies in Renaissance literature. D.S. Brewer. ISBN 978-0-85991-775-9.
- McClure, Alexander Wilson (1853). The Translators Revived; A Biographical Memoir of the Authors of the English Version of the Holy Bible (1st ed.). Library of Congress.
- Milton, Anthony (21 May 2009). "Laud, William (1573–1645)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/16112. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- Moore, Jonathan (2007). English hypothetical universalism : John Preston and the softening of reformed theology. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Pub. OCLC 133465473.
- Platten, S.; Woods, C. (2012). Comfortable Words: Polity, Piety and the Book of Common Prayer. SCM studies in worship and liturgy. SCM Press. ISBN 978-0-334-04670-7.
- ISBN 0-300-05688-5.
- Towers, S. M. (2003). Control of Religious Printing in Early Stuart England. Studies in modern British religious history. Boydell Press. ISBN 978-0-85115-939-3.
- ASIN B0007G148O.
- Wadkins, Timothy (3 January 2008). "Percy, John". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9499. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ISBN 9780002114042.
- Yorke, Philip Chesney (1911). Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 276–278. . In