William Laud

William Laud (1573-1645) was an archbishop of Canterbury, Engaland, born at Reading, son of a clothier. He studied at and became a Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford. He was ordained in 1601. He early gave evidence of his High-Church proclivities and his hostility to the Puritans, whom for their disdain of forms he regarded as the subverters of the Church. He rose by a succession of preferments, archdeaconship of Huntingdon one of them, to the Primacy, but declined the offer of a cardinal's hat at the hands of the Pope, and became along with Strafford a chief adviser of the unfortunate Charles I. His advice did not help the king out of his troubles, and his obstinate, narrow-minded pedantry brought his own head to the block. He was beheaded for treason on Tower Hill on January 10, 1645. He "could see no religion" in Scotland once on a visit there, "because he saw no ritual, and his soul was grieved".

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William Law, William Learned Marcy, William Lenthall, William Lilly, William Lisle Bowles