Laud, William

Laud, William (1573–1645). Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud has always been a controversial character. Born at Reading, a graduate of St John's College, Oxford (1594), he was successively chaplain to the earl of Devonshire (1603), president of St John's (1611–21), dean of Gloucester (1616), bishop of St Davids (1621–6), Bath and Wells (1626–8), and London (1628–33), and archbishop (1633–45). Historians have regarded his use of the Court of High Commission and especially his supposed attempt to enforce the English Prayer Book on Scotland (1637) as the watershed of the reign. Impeached by the Long Parliament December 1640), committed to the Tower (1641), and tried (1644), Laud was beheaded on 10 January 1645. Past historians have evaluated him either as a secret papist who corrupted the church or as the martyr of true Anglicanism. Modern research, however, based on his own writings reveals a different picture; Laud aimed not to provoke, but to heal, controversy. Not a theologian, he was unconcerned by doctrinal minutiae; far from encouraging popery his one known theological work was a stout defence of the church against catholicism. The Scottish Prayer Book was not the work of Laud, but of the Scottish bishops, backed by Charles. Laud enforced Arminianism neither through the High Commission nor through influencing Oxford to create an Arminian clergy.