William Laud

William Laud

William Laud (7 October 1573 – 10 January 1645) was an English archbishop and academic. He was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633, during the personal rule of Charles I. Arrested in 1640, he was executed in 1645.

In matters of church polity, Laud was autocratic. Laudianism refers to a collection of rules on matters of ritual, in particular, that were enforced by Laud in order to maintain uniform worship in England and Wales, in line with the king's preferences. They were precursors to later High Church views. In theology, Laud was accused of being an Arminian and opponent of Calvinism, as well as covertly favouring Roman Catholic doctrines (see Arminianism in the Church of England). On all three grounds, he was regarded by Puritan clerics and laymen as a formidable and dangerous opponent.

Quotes

• Now though in nature the Commonwealth go first; first men, before religious and faithful men; and the Church can have no being but in the Commonwealth: yet in grace the Church goes first; religious and godly men, better than men; and the Commonwealth can have no blessed and happy being, but by the Church. For true religion ever blesses a State: provided that they which profess it do not in their lives dishonour both God and it.
  • Sermon (19 June 1621), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume I: Sermons (1847), p. 6

• ...the King is God's immediate lieutenant upon earth; and therefore one and the same action is God's by ordinance, and the King's by execution. And the power which resides in the King is not any assuming to himself, nor any gift from the people, but God's power, as well in, as over, him.
  • Sermon at Whitehall (19 June 1625), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume I: Sermons (1847), p. 94

• I had a serious offer made me again to be a Cardinal. ... But my answer again was, that something dwelt within me which would not suffer that, till Rome were other than it is.
  • Diary (17 August 1633), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume III: Devotions, Diary, and History (1847),p. 219

• For my care of this Church, the reducing of it into order, the upholding of the external worship of God in it, and the settling of it to the rules of its first reformation, are the causes (and the sole causes, whatever are pretended) of all this malicious storm, which hath lowered so black upon me, and some of my brethren.
  • Speech in the Star Chamber at the censure of John Bastwick, Henry Burton and William Prynne (16 June 1637), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume VI: Part I (1847), p. 42

• ...it is versus altare, 'towards His altar', as the greatest place of God's residence upon earth. (I say the greatest, 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'. And a greater reverence, no doubt, is due to the body than to the word of our Lord.
  • Speech in the Star Chamber at the censure of John Bastwick, Henry Burton and William Prynne (16 June 1637), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume VI: Part I (1847), p. 57

• Ever since I came in place, I laboured nothing more, than that the external public worship of God (too much slighted in most parts of this kingdom) might be preserved, and that with as much decency and uniformity as might be; being still of opinion, that unity cannot long continue in the Church, where uniformity is shut out at the church door.
  • Speech at his trial (12 March 1644), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume IV: History of Troubles and Trial (1847), p. 60

Quotes about William Laud

• The Parliament was certainly far from faultless. We fully agree with Mr. Hallam in reprobating their treatment of Laud. For the individual, indeed, 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 of her especial favour.
  • Thomas Babington Macaulay, 'Hallam' (September 1828), Critical and Historical Essays contributed to the Edinburgh Review: Vol. I (1848), p. 168