10 January 1645
A.D. William
Laud's Head Rolls. A welcomed
departure, the Billygoat of Canterbury heads off to another
life. A few words from Wiki.
Contents
Early
life
Early
clerical ministry
Laud was ordained on 5 April 1601. He
soon gained reputations for Arminian and High Church tendencies,
antipathy to Puritanism,
as well as for intellectual and organisational brilliance. At that time the Calvinist party was strong in the
Church of England. Thus, Laud's affirmation of apostolic succession was unpopular in many quarters. In 1602 Laud argued for the eternal
visible continuity of the Church, which led Bishop George Abbot to condemn the young priest. Laud told James I that Abbot believed in the continuation of the Church of England through
various medieval heretical sects.[citation
needed] In his BD thesis, Laud argued for the absolute necessity of baptism and
that without bishops a church would not be a true church. Another Calvinist,
Oxford professor Thomas
Holland, claimed that Laud had taken most of his arguments from
the Jesuit priest Robert Bellarmine
and sought to foment disunity between the Church of England and foreign
Protestant churches.[2] However, Laud's
copy of Bellarmine's Disputationes contains his annotations up to 1619, which supported Calvinist doctrines
on such issues as predestination, defended the orthodox Calvinist Theodore Beza against
Bellarmine's criticisms and upheld the doctrine of the perseverance
of the saints.[2]
In 1605, Laud obliged his patron, Lord
Devonshire, by conducting his marriage to a divorcée, Penelope,
Lady Rich. Laud later regretted this liturgical action and for
many years fasted and prayed on its anniversary, begging for God's forgiveness
for serving the ambition and sins of others.[2]
In October 1606, Laud preached a
controversial sermon in St Mary's, which the vice-chancellor, Henry Airay, denounced for
"sundry scandalous and Popish passages", summoning Laud to appear
before him. However, Laud's friend Sir William Paddy petitioned
Chancellor Lord
Buckhurst and protected Laud.[2] In 1608, in his DD
thesis, Laud claimed that only a bishop can confer holy orders and that
episcopacy is not only a distinct order from presbyters but superior to them by
divine right. Laud's critics claimed this deprived foreign Reformed Protestants
of the status of churches.[2]
Laud's refusal to follow the
Protestant versus Catholic controversy predominant in his day confused many
contemporaries. In 1608 Joseph Hall published the Epistles in which he said to Laud: "Today you
are in the tents of the Romanists, tomorrow in our's, the next day betweene
both, against both. Our adversaries think you our's, wee their's". Regius
Professor of Divnity Robert Abbot, a few years later thundered: "What art thou, ROMISH or ENGLISH?
PAPIST or PROTESTANT? Or what art thou? A Mungrel, or compound of both?"
In his later years Laud mentioned a troubling dream that he had been reconciled
to the Catholic Church, though there is no evidence he seriously thought of
converting.[2]
Richard Neile appointed Laud his
chaplain in 1608 and became his most important supporter during the next
fifteen years. As clerk of the closet, Neile thus enabled Laud to enter the
court. In 1609 Laud became rector of West Tilbury in Essex.
Continuing his rise through clerical ranks, Laud became the President of St
John's College and a royal chaplain in 1611; a Prebendary of Lincoln in 1614 and Archdeacon of Huntingdon in 1615.
James I purportedly distrusted Laud, warning his son Charles and the Duke
of Buckingham: "I keep Laud back from all Place of Rule and
Authority, because I find he hath a restless Spirit, and cannot see when
matters are well, but loves to toss and change, and to bring Things to a pitch
of Reformation in his own Brain...take him to you, but upon my Soul you will
repent it".[citation
needed] However Laud was devoted to James and after the King's death listed his
virtues and achievements.[2]
In a sermon on Shrove Sunday, 1615
Laud (according to Peter Heylin)
"insisted on some points which might indifferently be imputed either to
Popery or Arminianism (as about that time they began to call it)" and
attacked Presbyterians as being as bad as Catholics.[citation
needed] Robert Abbot criticised Laud and questioned his adherence to
Protestantism, an allegation heard before King James but dismissed by him along
with an apology from Abbot for his conduct.[2]
In 1616 King James appointed Laud to
the Deanery of Gloucester, where the next year Laud caused controversy by
placing the cathedral communion table altarwise in the church's eastern section
and made people bow in its direction when they approached. The Bishop of
Gloucester, Miles Smith, was among those outraged. However Neile protected Laud in the dispute and
in 1618 Laud accompanied James to Scotland, where again Laud provoked
controversy by being one of the bishops who wore a surplice at a funeral. King James
purportedly later complained that Laud was not satisfied with the Scottish
Parliament's passing the Five
Articles of Perth and argued strongly that he should
make the Scots "to a nearer conjunction with the Liturgy and Canons"
of the Anglican Church and sent to him two unsolicited proposals on the
subject.[2]
Bishop
He was consecrated Bishop of St David's in 1621. He was employed by James in the delicate matter of Buckingham's
mother's conversion to Catholicism. On 24 May 1622 there was a
conference between Laud and the Jesuit John Fisher who wanted to
convert her. Laud later discussed the matter with her but was unable to
persuade her not to convert to Rome. However he did become chaplain to
Buckingham three weeks afterwards and for the next six years he was devoted to
him. Laud's account of his conference with Fisher was published (as an appendix
to Francis
White's account of his conference with Fisher) in 1624 at
James's instigation. In it, Laud was reticent about condemning churches or
individuals as heretical or to ponder on what doctrines could hinder salvation.[2]
In 1621 he preached that
"Commonwealth and Church are collective bodies made up of many into one,
and both so near allied that the one, the Church, can never subsist but in the
other, the Commonwealth...the Commonwealth can have no blessed and happy being,
but by the Church". In 1626 he said that people who were sacrilegious
towards the Church inevitably became violent towards sovereigns as well. By the
mid-1620s Laud had abandoned earlier support for Calvinism and argued that
anti-Arminianism was threatening both Church and civil unity, warning Parliament
in 1626: "Divide the minds of men about their hope of salvation in Christ
and tell me what unity there will be". The disputes over predestination he
condemned, remarking that "something about these controversies is
unmasterable in this life", though he was aware of the dangers of extreme
anti-Arminianism.[2]
Laud played a leading part in Charles
I's coronation and preached at the opening of Parliament in 1625 and 1626.
Through Buckingham, Laud was in contact with Charles and was dispatched by
Charles to Lancelot Andrewes to enquire into Andrewes' opinions on Church matters. Laud considered Andrewes
"the great light of the Christian world" and edited a collection of
his sermons. Upon Andrewes's death Laud was appointed Dean of
the Chapel Royal and promised the Archbishopric of
Canterbury by Charles. Laud was also appointed Bishop of
Bath and Wells in 1626, to the Privy Council in
April 1627 and became Bishop of London
in July 1628.[2]
However Laud had enemies at court and John
Williams was constantly intriguing against him and Laud feared
that he would reconcile with Buckingham and secure his revenge against him.
According to one biographer, Laud possessed an obsessive fear of Williams and
believed his hand lay behind the agitation of the anti-Laudian's Henry
Burton, John Bastwick and William Prynne and even the Prayer Book Rebellion in Scotland.[2]
In his sermons in Parliament in 1626
and 1628, Laud hoped for peace and unity along with an emphasis on the power of
the King in alliance with the Church, warning against radicals who would
subvert both. In a court sermon in 1625 Laud said the King's power "is not
any assuming to himself, nor any gift from the people, but God's power...one
and the same action is God's by ordinance and the King's by execution".
Parliament's sole duty was to provide the King with money: "The King is
the sun. He draws up some vapours, some supply, some support, from us. It is
true he must do so: for if the sun draw up no vapours, it can pour down no
rain". In July 1626 in a sermon at court, Laud claimed that the King's
office and person were sacred and so irreverence towards him was sacrilege.[2]
Laud drafted many speeches for
Buckingham to defend himself and for Charles to defend Buckingham. He also
drafted the King's response to the House of Commons's remonstrance of June 1628
which strongly defended Charles's policies and Buckingham but ended with the plea:
"Let us see moderation and the ancient parliamentary way, and we shall
love nothing more than parliaments". However on another occasion Laud
tried unsuccessfully to secure a conviction for treason for the author of a
pamphlet attacking the King's forced
loan as it would divide the King from the people. He also
weighed up the benefits and drawbacks of the King calling a Parliament and
dwelt on the drawbacks, claiming that parliamentary subsidies to the King were
ordained by God, not for Parliament to barter concessions from the King in
return for subsidies. Another paper to the King outlined the history of
parliamentary subsidies and Laud claimed that Magna Carta "had an
obscure birth by usurpation, and was fostered and shewed to the world by
rebellion"; the King could revoke Magna Carta as he pleased and that
Parliament should vote taxes "without dispute".[2][3]
Laud was unpopular in the Commons and
a remonstrance there in June 1628 had condemned him and Neile as Arminians.
Laud also heard rumours that a newly called Parliament would mean he would be
sacrificed to appease their anger at the King's policies. Buckingham was
assassinated to national rejoicing in August 1628 but Laud described his death
as "the saddest news that ever I heard in my life".[4] Laud was perhaps
closer to Buckingham than even Charles and in his will Laud left Buckingham's
son a chalice and gold paten "as the memorial of him who had a faithful
heart to love, and the honour to be beloved of his father".[2]
In February 1629 it was rumoured that
Laud had preached against Arminianism at court and Parliament was informed by Humphrey May that Laud and
Neile had knelt before the Privy Council to deny that they were Arminians. This
may have been tactical on Laud's part as the King wanted money out of
Parliament but Parliament was dissolved soon after so the matter was heard of
no more.[2]
Chancellor
of Oxford
In 1630 Laud was elected Chancellor
of the University of Oxford by nine votes. He took an
active part in university affairs, more so than his predecessors, keeping up a
weekly correspondence with his Vice-Chancellor throughout his tenure as well as
receiving detailed letters on Oxford matters from other friends there. In June
1636 came the fruition of many years work on a new code of statutes, with Laud
the primary author. He extended the power of the Chancellor and strengthened
discipline, and in a separate campaign he secured the rights of visitation of
the university. He insisted on his right to examine the religious conformity of
every member of the university though he did not in the end practice them.
These statutes remained in force until the University
Reform Act of 1854.
Laud presided over the King's visit to
Oxford in August 1636, as well as building a new quadrangle to St John's
College, donating to the Bodleian Library
over 1,000 books, manuscripts and coins, and founding a lectureship
in Arabic.[2] He also acquired,
at some expense, two Arabic script printing sets from the Netherlands, first
publishing in Oxford in 1639.[5]
Archbishop
of Canterbury
Altar,
c. 1635, the centre of dispute between Puritans and Laudians, possibly
consecrated by Laud himself. St. Peter's Collegiate Church, Wolverhampton, West
Midlands, England. Parish of Central Wolverhampton WV1 1TS.
Laud was appointed Archbishop
of Canterbury on 19 August 1633 and confirmed on 19 September. The pun "give great praise
to the Lord, and little Laud to the devil" is a warning to Charles
attributed to the official court jester Archibald Armstrong. Laud was known to be touchy about his diminutive stature. He was almost
sixty when he became Archbishop, and having waited with increasing impatience
for a decade to replace Abbot, was no longer prepared to compromise on any aspect of his policy.[6] Laud wrote to the
King that "if it [the Church] had more power, the Kinge might have more
both obedience and service"; Laud's vision was of Church and state in
union, working together to strengthen the Church as well as cultivate obedience
to the King independent of Parliament. A close working partnership was
consequently formed between Laud and Charles, with Laud implementing the
practical policies inspired by Charles.[2]
Laud also drew up a list of what he
wanted to do for the Church; these included securing the economic power of the
Church. He also wished to restore St Paul's Cathedral which he devoted himself throughout the 1630s. This included in a new west
front designed by Inigo Jones,
which was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. He also helped improve the administration of cathedrals but this
led to complaints from clergymen that he was infringing on their jurisdiction.
Laud used the Court of High Commission to punish clergy who he felt were not
fulfilling their duties, remarking in the case of Ireland that if one Irish
bishop was deprived of his position it "would do more good in Ireland,
than anything that hath been there these forty years".[2]
The main controversy of his time as
Archbishop, however, was his conflict with the Puritans. Whereas Lord
Strafford saw the political dangers of Puritanism, Laud saw the
threat to the episcopacy.
(Their political programme, centring on the unquestioned authority of the King,
was generally called the Thorough
policy.) 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. In this climate,
Laud's high church policy was seen as a sinister development. 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 policy was influenced by his
desire to impose uniformity on the Church of England, which was driven by a
belief that this was the duty of his office but, to those of differing views,
it came as persecution. Perhaps this had the unintended consequence of
garnering support for the most implacable opponents of the Anglican compromise.
In 1637, William Prynne, John Bastwick and Henry
Burton were convicted of seditious libel and had their ears
cropped and their cheeks branded. Prynne reinterpreted the "SL"
("Seditious Libeller") branded on his forehead as "Stigmata Laudis". Laud moved
to silence his principal episcopal critic John
Williams who was convicted of various offences in the Star Chamber; but contrary to
Laud's expectation, Williams refused to resign as Bishop of Lincoln,
and waited patiently until 1641 when he moved to bring about Laud's downfall.
Laud believed ceremonial conformity
was essential because (as he expressed at his trial) "the hedge that fence
the substance of religion from all the indignities which profaneness and
sacrilege too commonly put upon it...unity cannot long continue in the church,
where uniformity is shut out at the church door". By upholding a more
decorous form of worship and church decoration, Laud believed his was restoring
the Church "to the rules of its first reformation", although he
admitted that the Book of Common Prayer and Church canons could be beneficially amended. In his visitations of
twenty dioceses between 1634 and 1637, Laud set out to impose uniformity of
worship in a campaign not seen since the Reformation. However he was unsure of
the legal position of imposing altar tables at the east end of churches so held
back from forcing them until inserting the need for them in the Irish canons of
1635 and the English canons of 1640. In his speech of 1637 in the Star Chamber
against Burton, Bastick and Prynne, Laud claimed that he had not imposed the new
position of the communion table but its arrangement was not just an issue of
taste as it was "the greatest place of God's residence upon earth...yea
greater than the pulpit, for there 'tis Hoc est corpus meum, 'This is My
body', but in the pulpit 'tis at most but Hoc est verbum meum, 'This is
My word'."[2]
In 1633 was reissued the Declaration of Sports that permitted certain recreations on the sabbath. He was not greatly
involved in this area, though he was strongly opposed to fasting on the
sabbath. He was concerned how Puritan lay justices were using strict
sabbatarian orders to infringe on the Church's jurisdiction.
Due to his stringent opposition to
Puritanism and his emphasis on ceremony, Laud was accused of harbouring
Catholic sympathies. He was twice offered the position of Cardinal
in the Catholic Church, possibly by the English Benedictine David
Codner. However Laud rejected this offer, saying that
"something dwelt within me which would not suffer that, till Rome were
other than it is". He also refused to meet the unofficial papal emissary Gregorio Panzani
and showed hostility to the papal agent George
Con. He reacted to his friend Kenelm Digby's conversion to
Rome with distress and raised the problem of conversions to Rome by members of
the court at a council board and secured a royal proclamation against them. In
1639 Laud published an expanded account of his conference with Fisher in 1622
in which he offered a legalistic defence of England's separation from Rome;
unlike more fervent Protestants he did not regard the Pope as Anti-Christ, or
as a false church and only in certain respects was Rome considered idolatrous
and heretical. He even admitted that salvation within the Catholic Church was
possible. Some who were not usually Laud's supporters admired this work,
including James Ussher
who wanted it translated into Latin; John Hacket, who called it a "Master-Piece
in Divinity"; and Sir Edward
Dering who predicted that the book "shall strike the
Papists under the fifth ribbe when he is dead and gone" and would be
Laud's "lasting Epitaph".[2] Laud viewed the
book as his lasting testament against charges of Catholicism and left £100 in
his will to have it translated and dispersed far and wide so "that the
Christian world may see and judge of my religion".
Laud was unenthusiastic when the
Scottish Calvinist John Dury
approached him with a scheme for pan-Protestant unity across Europe, although
he admitted that reunion with the more episcopal-minded Swedish Church was more
likely than the Presbyterian Swiss. The churches in England for Dutch and
French immigrants were pressured by Laud into conforming with the Anglican
Church, as Laud believed that "their example is of ill consequence...for
many are confirmed in their stubborn ways of disobedience to the
Church-government, seeing them so freely suffered...[their separation from the
Anglicans] alienate them from the state". Laud also sought to make sure
English people abroad stuck to Anglican forms of worship. such as merchants in
Holland and English soldiers in Dutch pay.[2][7]
Similarly, Laud sought to impose
conformity on all of the King's dominions. He wanted Guernsey brought under episcopal
control and was the head of a commission for the English colonies in America,
ruling that no one could emigrate to New England without a
certificate showing their religious conformity. In Ireland he supported the
introduction of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church and a court of high commission. Initially he wanted
the Irish to adopt all the English canons but compromised in allowing a
modified set of canons to be adopted in Ireland, remarking that some
improvement on the English canons was the result. In Scotland he wanted the
Anglican prayer book adopted whole but this was rejected by Scottish bishops,
being left to revise the prayer book for Scottish use. However even this
revised prayer book was strongly objected to by the Scots but Laud did not
believe the fault of the ensuing conflict lay with him but the Scottish bishops:
"[I warned them] to be very careful what they did and how they demeaned
themselves...that they should be very moderate in the prosecution and temper
themselves from all offence" and on another occasion lamenting the
"want of care and circumspection...in the way of managing the thing...and
then in timely suppressing the first disorders about it".[2]
The conflict with the Scots led to him
becoming a hate figure amongst them and also to the recall of Parliament
in April 1640. Many MPs condemned Laud for introducing Catholic-style forms of
worship, especially bowing towards the altar, and Laud advised the King to
dissolve Parliament, which the King did after just three weeks sitting. Charles
enabled Convocation to sit after the parliamentary dissolution to discuss the
new canons. Laud was associated with the King's high-handed policies and became
extremely unpopular, with a mob laying siege to Lambeth Palace, Laud being forced
to take refuge in Whitehall. With the Bishops' Wars going badly for
Charles, he called another Parliament in November 1640.
Trial
and execution
Etching
by Wenceslaus
Hollar, Laud being tried for
treason, with several people present labelled
Laud was aware of his unpopularity,
remarking that "I am almost every day threatened with my ruin in
parliament". He also told John Selden he would happily
acquiesce in the dropping of the revised canons passed by Convocation if this
was wanted. On 18 December 1640 the Commons, on a motion proposed by John Pym, impeached Laud for high
treason. The MP Harbottle
Grimston denounced him as "the roote and ground of all our
miseries and calamities...look upon him as he is in his highness, and he is the
very sty of all pestilential filth, that hath infected the State and Government
of this Commonwealth".[8] The charges
against Laud included the allegations that he endeavoured to set up an
arbitrary government and thereby subvert the Fundamental
Laws of England, that he hindered justice, that he
altered the true religion and that he usurped papal powers, that he worked to
reconcile England to the Church of Rome, that he persecuted Puritan preachers,
that he sowed division with Protestant churches abroad, that he stoked a war
with Scotland, and that he alienated the king from his subjects.[2] As a consequence,
Laud was brought into the custody of the Gentleman Usher.[9][clarification
needed]
The case against him was brought
forward in February 1641 with fourteen articles of impeachment voted in the
Commons on 24 February. On 1 March Laud was sent to the Tower of London. Maurice Wynn remarked eight
days later that Laud was ready to die, as the King did not regard him now.[10] Laud, in his final
service in his chapel, found comfort in chapter 50 of Isaiah and Psalm 94.
At Strafford's execution in May he
fainted when trying to give him a final blessing, later complaining that
Strafford had been executed because he had served a king "who knew not how
to be, or be made, great". Charles did not favour Laud as previously and
it was only at Edward
Hyde's instigation that the King gave Laud a royal pardon
with the imprimatur of the Great
Seal of the Realm in April 1644, though this pardon did
not save him. From 1641 to 1643 he remained imprisoned in the Tower. In 1643 he
was ordered by Parliament to appoint Edward Corbet to Chartham. Laud had previously
clashed with Corbet in Oxford and the King instructed him not to accept this
promotion. Laud followed the King's advice and Prynne, another of Laud's old
enemies, was ordered on 31 May to seize Laud's papers for evidence against him
for a trial. The Commons voted another ten articles for Laud's impeachment five
months later, with his trial beginning on 12 March 1644 and ending on 11
October.
The trial proceeded irregularly:
witnesses were interfered with, and the lords who sat in judgement were not
present throughout the whole of the trial (apart from the Speaker). Laud was
given only two hours to form his answer to the prosecution and it was not until
the last day of the trial that his counsel was heard on points of law. Prynne
had access to twenty-one rolls of Laud's papers but was unable to find evidence
to substantiate the charges. Although it seems that Laud did not consciously
lie in his trial, he did hold back information that he knew his prosecutors
could use as evidence for the charges against him. For example he brought as
evidence docket books on church patronage which he knew were inaccurate and
rejected accusations that he had promoted incendiary figures as he knew the
prosecution did not possess the evidence that showed he did indeed employ them.[2]
The prosecution was unable to convict
him by ordinary procedures and so Parliament passed a bill of attainder
on 4 January 1645, with the House of Lords being pressured by a mob and with
only nineteen peers present. Laud was executed on Tower Hill on 10 January and in his
speech on the scaffold he denied he deserved this fate but was heckled by his
enemies such as Sir John Clotworthy. Laud was
initially buried in the chancel of All Hallows Barking but after the Restoration he was moved to the chapel of St John's College, Oxford in a vault beneath
the altar.[2]
Laud was survived by his pet tortoise, who until its death in
1753 was the last survivor of the Civil War. Its shell is preserved underneath
Laud's portrait at Lambeth Palace[11]
Legacy
Stained
glass windows in the Chapter House, Canterbury Cathedral, depicting Henry IV,
Henry VIII, Thomas Cranmer and Laud.
Lord
Clarendon in his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in
England, summed up Laud's character from the view point of a Tory:
He was a man of great parts, and very
exemplar virtues, allayed and discredited by some unpopular natural
infirmities; the greatest of which was (besides a hasty, sharp way of
expressing himself,) that he believed innocence of heart and integrity of
manners was a guard strong enough to secure any man in his voyage through this
world, in what company soever he travelled and through what ways soever he was
to pass: and sure never any man was better supplied with that provision...He
was a man of great courage and resolution, and being most assured within
himself that he proposed no end in all his actions or design than what was
pious and just, (as sure no man had ever a heart more entire to the King, the
Church, or his country,) he never studied the best ways to those ends; he
thought, it may be, that any art or industry that way would discredit, at least
make the integrity of the end suspected. Let the cause be what it will, he did
court persons too little; nor cared to make his designs and purposes appear as
candid as they were by shewing them in any other dress than their own natural
beauty and roughness; and did not consider enough what men said or were like to
say to him. If the faults and vices were fit to be looked into and discovered,
let the persons be who they would that were guilty of them, they were sure to
find no connivance of favour from him. He intended the discipline of the Church
should be felt, as well as spoken of, and that it should be applied to the
greatest and most splendid transgressors, as well as to the punishment of
smaller offences and meaner offenders; and thereupon called for or cherished
the discover of those who were not careful to cover their own iniquities,
thinking they were above the reach of other men, or their power and will to
chastise.[12]
Lord Macaulay offered a
contrasting view from the Whig
side: "[For Laud] we entertain a more unmitigated contempt than for any
other character in our history. The fondness with which a portion of the church
regards his memory, can be compared only to that perversity of affection which
sometimes leads a mother to select the monster or the idiot of the family as
the object or her especial favour". Macaulay also claimed Laud's
"mind had not expansion enough to comprehend a great scheme, good or bad.
His oppressive acts were not, like those of the Earl of Strafford, parts of an
extensive system. They were the luxuries in which a mean and irritable
disposition indulges itself from day to day, the excesses natural to a little
mind in a great place...[he was] a ridiculous old bigot".[13] Later, in his History of England,
Macaulay spoke of "the energetic hatred which had burned in the heart of
Laud" and "the tyranny of Laud":
Of all the prelates of the Anglican
Church, Laud had departed farthest from the principles of the Reformation, and
had drawn nearest to Rome. His theology was more remote than even that of the
Dutch Arminians from the theology of the Calvinists. His passion for
ceremonies, his reverence for holidays, vigils, and sacred places, his ill
concealed dislike of the marriage of ecclesiastics, the ardent and not
altogether disinterested zeal with which he asserted the claims of the clergy
to the reverence of the laity, would have made him an object of aversion to the
Puritans, even if he had used only legal and gentle means for the attainment of
his ends. But his understanding was narrow; and his commerce with the world had
been small. He was by nature rash, irritable, quick to feel for his own
dignity, slow to sympathise with the sufferings of others, and prone to the
error, common in superstitious men, of mistaking his own peevish and malignant moods
for emotions of pious zeal. Under his direction every corner of the realm was
subjected to a constant and minute inspection. Every little congregation of
separatists was tracked out and broken up. Even the devotions of private
families could not escape the vigilance of his spies. Such fear did his rigour
inspire that the deadly hatred of the Church, which festered in innumerable
bosoms, was generally disguised under an outward show of conformity. On the
very eve of troubles, fatal to himself and to his order, the Bishops of several
extensive dioceses were able to report to him that not a single dissenter was
to be found within their jurisdiction.[14]
A year after Laud's death, his old
enemy Prynne published Canterburies Doome, a hostile account of Laud's
trial. In 1668 Peter Heylin
published a defence of Laud called Cyprianus Anglicus. In 1695 Henry Wharton published Laud's
surviving papers in The history of the troubles and tryal of the most
reverend father in God, and blessed martyr, William Laud.
During the eighteenth century there
were High Tory admirers of Laud but it was not until the Victorian age that his
popularity amongst High Churchmen reached its apogee, with the Anglo-Catholics
of the Oxford Movement
revering him. Cardinal Newman in his Apologia
Pro Vita Sua remarked that "I read Laud on
Tradition, and thought it (as I still think it) very masterly".[15]
In 1895 came the 250th anniversary of
Laud's execution and his supporters praised him as "one of the Fathers of
the English Reformation...one of those to whom, under God, we owe all that we
hold most dear".[16] C. H. Simpkinson
claimed Laud was "the chief advocate of the Working classes, the defender
of the poor, the Leader of the Education Movement, and the administrator who
endeavoured to exterminate the corruption of the Civil Service".[17] An exhibition at All
Hallows Barking was put on of relics of Laud and was seen by more than 2,000
visitors. On 10 January a big procession along with a choir made a pilgrimage
to the location of the scaffold at Tower Hill, where a Te Deum was sung
and the pages from Heylin's biography that dealt with his execution were read
out. However the occasion was not without its controversy as the leaders of the
commemoration received anonymous letters denouncing them: "You are doing
the work of the great Whore of Babylon and leading them to the Pope as your
Laud did".[18] As late as 1980 a
historian (Patrick Collinson) condemned Laud as "the greatest calamity ever visited upon the
English Church".[19]
He has been called "a public man
without a private life"; as he seems to have lived entirely for his work,
in that he had neither pastimes nor recreation, and remarkably few friends.[20] He was indeed far
more inclined to make enemies than friends, due to his irritable temper and the
extraordinary sharpness with which he reprimanded anyone, even his social
superiors, with whom he disagreed. When he clashed with the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Thomas
Richardson, in 1632, Laud so humiliated Richardson in public that
the judge left the room in tears.[21] Charles I towards
the end of his life 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 entirely on anyone else's judgement in such matters. Laud, on
his side, could not forgive the King for allowing Strafford's execution and
dismissed him as " a mild and gracious Prince, that knows not how to be or
be made great".[22]
Notes
3.
Jump up ^ Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics.
1621–1629 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 52–53, p. 338.
5.
Jump up ^ Roper,
Geoffrey (1985), "Arabic Printing and Publishing in England before
1820", British Society for Middle Eastern Studies Bulletin (12/1),
pp. 14–5 .
7.
Jump up ^ Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies.
1637–1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 37–38.
8.
Jump up ^ Russell, Fall of the British Monarchies, p. 182.
9.
Jump up ^ Russell, Fall of the British Monarchies, p. 211.
10. Jump up ^ Russell, Fall of the British Monarchies, p. 268.
12. Jump up ^ Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the
Rebellion. A New Selection (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 22, pp.
24–25.
13. Jump up ^ Lord Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays. Volume
One (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1907), pp. 41–42.
15. Jump up ^ Martin J. Svaglic (ed.), Apologia Pro Vita Sua
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 186.
16. Jump up ^ W. E. Collins (ed.), Archbishop Laud commemoration,
1895 (1895), p. 63.
19. Jump up ^ Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The
Church in English Society 1559–1625 (Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 90.
References
- Charles Carlton, Archbishop
William Laud (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987).
- W. E. Collins (ed.), Archbishop
Laud commemoration, 1895 (1895).
- Conrad
Russell, Parliaments and English
Politics. 1621–1629 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979).
- Conrad Russell, The Fall of
the British Monarchies. 1637–1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
- Hugh
Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud, 1573–1645
(Phoenix, 2000).
Further
reading
- E. C. E. Bourne, The
Anglicanism of William Laud (London: Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, 1947).
- J. Davies, The Caroline
Captivity of the Church: Charles I and the Remoulding of Anglicanism, 1625–1641
(1992).
- K. Fincham, ‘William Laud and the
Exercise of Caroline Ecclesiastical Patronage’, Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, 51 (2000), pp. 69–93.
- Kenneth Fincham and Nicholas
Tyacke, Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious
Worship, 1547-c.1700 (Oxford University Press, 2007).
- A. Ford, ‘Correspondence between
archbishops Ussher and Laud’, Archivium Hibernicum, 46 (1991–92),
pp. 5–21.
- Peter McCullough, Sermons at
Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching
(Cambridge University Press, 1998).
- W. J. Tighe, ‘William Laud and
the reunion of the churches: some evidence from 1637 and 1638’, History
Journal, 30 (1987), pp. 717–727.
- Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists:
Rise of English Arminianism, c.1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1987).
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