William Laud

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Laud, William,

1573–1645, archbishop of Canterbury (1633–45). He studied at St. John's College, Oxford, and was ordained a priest in 1601. From the beginning Laud showed his hostility to Puritanism. He became president of St. John's College in 1611, dean of Gloucester in 1616, and bishop of London in 1628. Laud thought of the English church as a branch of the universal church, claimed apostolic succession for the bishops, and believed that the Anglican ritual should be strictly followed in all churches. To accomplish these ends, Laud, working closely with Charles I, tried to eliminate Puritans from important positions in the church. As chancellor of Oxford (from 1629) he carried out many reforms, strengthened moral and intellectual discipline, and stamped out Calvinism to make Oxford a royalist stronghold. In 1633, Laud became archbishop of Canterbury and continued on a larger scale his efforts to enforce High Church forms of worship. Through the courts of high commission and Star Chamber he persecuted and imprisoned many nonconformists, such as William PrynnePrynne, William
, 1600–1669, English political figure and Puritan pamphleteer. Beginning his attacks on Arminian doctrine in 1627, he soon earned the enmity of William Laud.
..... Click the link for more information. . The tyranny of his courts and his identification of the episcopal form of church government with the absolutism of Charles brought about violent opposition not only from the Puritans but also from those who were jealous of the rights of Parliament. Supporting Charles and the earl of Strafford to the end, Laud was impeached (1640) by the Long Parliament. Found not guilty of treason by the House of Lords (1644), he was condemned to death by the Commons through a bill of attainder.

Bibliography

See biographies by A. Duncan-Jones (1927) and H. Trevor-Roper (2d ed. 1962).

Laud, William

Born Oct. 7, 1573, in Reading, Berkshire; died Jan. 10, 1645, in London. English church leader.

Laud, on the eve of the English Bourgeois Revolution of the 17th century, was one of the closest advisers of King Charles I and was the most hated by the people. In 1633 he became the archbishop of Canterbury (head of the Anglican Church). The church policy of Laud was aimed at harmonizing the dogma of the Anglican Church with Catholicism. He strove to strengthen the role of the church as a weapon at the service of absolutism. He inspired the cruel persecutions of the Puritans. In the beginning of the revolution he was accused of state treason. Laud was executed by order of the court of the Long Parliament.

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1490, restored by Archbishop Laud in 1634 and destroyed in 1643 during the Commonwealth), using transcripts of Archbishop Laud's trial for treason, in which the iconography of the 15th-century windows was discussed.

Highs and lows

The rest of the chapters take up range of subjects: legal documents in Shakespeare (Bradin Cormack), the trial of Archbishop Laud (Deborah Shuger), Artegall as ward in The Faerie Queene (Judith Owens), discourses of civil religion (Elliott Visconsi), and tyranny and grace in Milton (Paul Stevens), among others.

Taking Exception to the Law: Materializing Injustice in Early Modern Literature

She argues that the external performances instilled by these rituals provided significant staging for the reign of Charles I, who would join with Archbishop Laud in attempting "to fundamentally reshape religious belief and attitude through an innovative performance" of the BCP (55).

Pete Langman, ed. Negotiating the Jacobean Printed Book

Moreover, competing positions in the debate over the ritual and governance of church could evolve over time and be recast ideologically in the face of altered circumstances: in short, how one defended episcopacy in 1641, after Archbishop Laud had been dispatched to the Tower, might be different from how one did so during the Laudian ascendancy of the 1630s.

A Confusion of Tongues: Britain's Wars of Reformation

New England thronged with settlers in the 1630s as King Charles I and Archbishop Laud persecuted the Puritans; Virginia and Maryland thronged with settlers when Oliver Cromwell's troops defeated the king in the 1640s and established a republican government in the 1650s.

Errand in the wilderness

Far more compelling is the evidence she provides of the association of some women printers with radical causes: Elizabeth Purslowe, for example, was linked to 'seditious' pamphlets (91), several printers' wives were accused of printing radical material during the Civil War, and Anne Griffin faced down Archbishop Laud himself.

Helen Smith. Grossly Material Things: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England

What he didn't tell us was what became of the God-fearing, royal loyalist Archbishop Laud when Cromwell came to power.

Old friend could be heading for the church's top job; Columnist

His scholarly reputation had already been established by his first book, a re-evaluation of the unlovable Archbishop Laud, 'an interfering old bugger' as Hugh described him to his brother.

HUGH TREVOR-ROPER--THE TRAGIC HISTORIAN

Like Charles I and Archbishop Laud, but against recent historiographical trends, she regarded the Puritans as a fundamental danger to the crown.

The art of diplomacy: Kevin Sharpe revisits an article by C.V. Wedgwood, first published in History Today in 1960, that looks at the diplomatic mission made by the artist Peter Paul Rubens to the court of Charles I

Stratford shoulders away the symbol of empty achievement as he kneels before his 'ghostly father' Archbishop Laud, shortly himself to be decapitated, who extends his blessing through the bars of his cell.

Transcending history: David Howarth salutes the mystery and power of Delaroche's dramatic history paintings

Identified in popular polemic with Archbishop Laud and serving as a diocesan chancellor, Duck emerges from a context preoccupied with the claims of bishops to govern their dioceses, and his exploration of the early-medieval Church rested upon the qualities which made a bishop reformed.

Protestant bishops in restoration England

For example, we learn about readers of Foxe's book from Archbishop Laud to John Bunyan, about the provenance of various copies, about how some copies were wom out from too much reading, about the explorers who carried the Book of Martyrs to the New World, and about the tendency of subsequent generations to add their own events (such as the Gunpowder Plot) to Foxe's master narrative.