William Laud - Clergyman

Clergyman

William Laud was born in a house on Broad Street in Reading, of comparatively lowly origins; his father, also named William, was a cloth merchant (a fact about which Laud was to remain sensitive throughout his career). He was baptised at St Laurence's Church in Reading. He was educated at Reading School and, through a White Scholarship, St John's College, Oxford.

Laud was ordained on 5 April 1601; he soon gained a reputation for Arminian and High Church tendencies and antipathy to Puritanism and for intellectual and organisational brilliance. At that time the Calvinist party was strong in the Church of England and Laud's affirmation of apostolic succession was unpopular in many quarters. In 1605, somewhat against his will, he obliged his patron, Lord Devonshire, by conducting his marriage to a divorcée, Penelope, Lady Rich. In 1609 he became rector of West Tilbury in Essex.

Laud continued to rise through the ranks of the clergy, becoming the President of St John's College in 1611; a Prebendary of Lincoln in 1614 and Archdeacon of Huntingdon in 1615. James I distrusted him, predicting correctly that he would in time cause great trouble in the Church, and held him back for several years, despite the urgings of the future Charles I, who admired Laud. He was consecrated Bishop of St David's in 1621 and was translated as the Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1626 and the Bishop of London in 1628. Thanks to patrons, who included the King and the Duke of Buckingham, he reached the highest position in the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and with it the episcopal primacy of All England in 1633. As Archbishop of Canterbury he was prominent in government, taking the King's line and that of Lord Wentworth in all important matters: their political programme, centring on the unquestioned authority of the King, was generally called the Thorough policy. It is believed that he wrote the controversial Declaration of Sports issued by King Charles 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 was instrumental in establishing Oxford's Chair of Arabic and took an interest in acquiring Arabic manuscripts for the Bodleian Library. He also acquired, at some expense, two Arabic script printing sets from the Netherlands, first publishing in Oxford in 1639. His most significant contribution was the creation of a new set of statutes for the university, a task completed in 1636. Laud served as the fifth Chancellor of the University of Dublin between 1633 and 1645.

He has been called " a public man without a private life"- he seems to have lived entirely for his work, had no pastimes or recreation, and remarkably few friends. 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.Among his few friends was Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, the future Lord Chancellor. In his History, Hyde praised Laud's integrity and decency, and sympathised with his faults of rudeness and bad temper, which Hyde acknowledged he himself shared.