William Laud

Clergyman and Archbishop of Canterbury, born in Reading, S England, UK. He studied at Oxford, and was ordained in 1601. His learning and industry brought him many patrons, and he rapidly received preferment, becoming King's Chaplain (1611), Bishop of St David's (1621), Bishop of Bath and Wells and a privy councillor (1626), Bishop of London (1628), and Archbishop of Canterbury (1633). With Strafford and Charles I, he worked for absolutism in Church and state. In Scotland, his attempt (1635–7) to anglicize the Church led to the Bishops' Wars. In 1640 the Long Parliament impeached him. He was found guilty, and executed on Tower Hill.

William Laud (October 7, 1573 – January 10, 1645) was Archbishop of Canterbury and a fervent supporter of King Charles I of England, whom he encouraged to believe in divine right.

Laud was born in Reading, Berkshire, of comparatively low origins, his father having been a cloth merchant (a fact of which he was to remain sensitive throughout his career).

On April 5, 1601, he entered the Church, and his Catholic tendencies and antipathy to Puritanism, combined with his intellectual and organizational brilliance, soon made him a name. At that time, the Calvinist party was strong in the Church, and Laud's affirmation of Apostolic succession was unpopular in many quarters.

He continued to rise through the ranks of the clergy, becoming President of St John's College in 1611; Thanks to patrons who included George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and the king himself, he reached the highest position the Church of England had to offer, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1633.

In 1630, Laud was elected as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and became much more closely involved in the running of the university than many of his predecessors had been. Laud served as the fifth Chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin between 1633 and 1645.

The famous pun "give great praise to the Lord, and little laud to the devil" is a warning to Charles attributed to the official court jester or "fool" Archie Armstrong. Laud was known to be touchy about his diminutive stature.

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. 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.

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. 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, notwithstanding being granted a royal pardon.