813 



LAUD, WILLIAM. 



LAUDER, SIR THOMAS DICK. 



814 



Lincoln he retained his deanery in commendam, together with the other 

 preferments which he held at that time. 



Laud says, in hia ' Diary,' that he reaigned hia presidentship of 

 St. John's College, November 17, 1621, "by reaaon of the strict- 

 ness of that statute, which I will not violate, nor my oath to it 

 under any colour : " yet the king had given him leave to hold it ; 

 but in truth avarice was never one of Laud's vices. lu May 1622 the 

 conference between Laud and Fisher the Jeauit took place. It was 

 held in the presence of the Marquis of Buckingham, who shortly 

 after, as Laud himself informs us, " was pleased to enter upon a near 

 respect to him, the particulars of which were not for paper." On the 

 15th of June he became ' C." to Buckingham. It is thus he writes it 

 in his ' Diary : ' Some call it chaplain ; others, among whom is 

 Heylyn, confessor. It is certainly not usual for a nobleman even of 

 the highest rank to have a bishop for his chaplain. 



Laud was 'a great dreamer of dreams, and though he repeatedly 

 affirms the contrary, he evidently attached much importance to them. 

 The following extract from his ' Diary ' is a specimen : " December 14, 

 Sunday night, I did dream that the lord keeper was dead ; that I passed 

 by one of his men that was about a monument for him ; that I heard 

 him say his lower lip was infinitely swelled and fallen, and he rotten 

 already. This dream did trouble me." 



The lord-keeper (Williams) had become jealous of Laud's growing 

 favour with Buckingham, and he was incautious in betraying this 

 jealousy. "January 11, I was with his majesty to show him the 

 epistle that was to be printed before the conference between me and 

 Fisher the Jesuit, Mail 21, 1622, which he was pleased to approve. 

 The king brake with me about the book printed then of the visitation 

 of the church. He was hard of belief that A. B. C. was the author of 

 it My lord keeper tnett with me in the withdrawing- chamber, and 

 quarrelled me gratis." 



Laud's rise was now rapid. In 1C26 he was made bishop of Bath and 

 Wells, and dean of the Chapel Royal. On March 8th of thia year he 

 has the following entry in his ' Diary : ' " Dreamed that I was recon- 

 ciled to the Church of Rome." In 1627 he was made a privy-coun- 

 cillor. On the llth of July 1628 he says, " My congd deslier waa 

 signed by the king for the bishopric of London." About this time, on 

 his acquainting the king with certain rumours spread abroad against 

 him (Laud), Charles replied, " That he should not trouble himself with 

 such reports, till he saw him forsake hia other friends." On the death 

 of Buckingham, Laud plunged completely into his political career. 

 Charles now looked upon him as hia principal minister. It was at 

 this time that the close union commenced between Laud and 

 Stratford. 



Laud commenced his career of statesmanship with a zealous per- 

 secution of the Puritans, or religious sectarians. Leighton, a physi- 

 cian, having published a book against the bishops, called 'Siou's Plea,' 

 was sentenced by the court of Star Chamber to have bis ears cropped, 

 hia nose flit, his forehead stigmatised, and to be whipped. Between 

 the sentence and the execution of it Leighton escaped out of the 

 Fleet, but he was retaken in Bedfordshire, and underwent this atro- 

 cious punishment. In 1630 Laud was chosen chancellor of the Uni- 

 versity of Oxford. In 1632 he obtained for his creature Francis 

 Windebauke the office of secretary of state ; and in the same year 

 Dr. Juioii was, he says in his ' Diary,' sworn dean of his majesty's-, 

 closet " That I might have one that I might trust near his majesty." 

 Hrylyn remarks on the above proceedings " So that Windebanke 

 having the king's ear on one side, and the clerk of the closet on the 

 other, he might presume to have his tale well told between them ; 

 and that his majesty should not easily be prepossessed with anything 

 to his disadvantage." On the 16th of August 1633 Laud was appointed 

 archbishop of Canterbury : he has the following entry in his ' Diary : ' 

 " August 4. That very morning (of Abbot's death) there came one 

 to me, seriously, and that avowed ability to perform it, and offered 

 me to be a cardinal : I went presently to the king and acquainted 

 him both with the thing and the person." " August 17, Saturday. 1 

 had a eerious offer made me again to be a cardinal : I was tben from 

 court, but so soon as I came thither (which waa by Wednesday, 

 August 21), I acquainted his majesty with it. But my answer again 

 was, that something dwelt within me which would not. suffer that till 

 Rome was other than it is." Laud made a declaration that in the 

 disposition of ecclesiastical benefices he would give a preference to the 

 single man over the married, ' ceterU paribus.' The close union between 

 the English Church and the aristocracy appears to have commenced 

 about this time. 



Laud's letters to Wentworth, afterwards earl of Strafford, exhibit a 

 more faithful mirror of the man's character than is anywhere else to 

 be met with. His ' Diary, ' though it bears sufficient impress of his 

 peculiar spirit, discloses his character but imperfectly, particularly as 

 there are many apparently important facts only hinted at, and names 

 of which only the initials are given. The history of his troubles and 

 trial, by himself, and the voluminous life by Heylyn, were expressly 

 written to vindicate his conduct and character. In perusing the 

 letters between Laud and Wentworth the reader feels as if allowed to 

 be present at a confidential conversation between those personages. 

 The letters of Stratford, along with many indications of a violent, 

 arbitrary, overbearing temper, exhibit evidence of strength and saga* 

 city, and sometimes even of greatness of mind. Of the last- mentioned 



quality the reader will in vain search for any trace in the letters of the 

 prelate. In courage and violence he did not yield to Strafford ; but 

 narrowness and littleness appear to have been the distinguishing 

 characteristic of Laud's mind, and yet, contracted though his intel- 

 lectual range was, some parts of his ' Conference with Fisher the 

 Jesuit,' besides great scholastic learning, display considerable acute- 

 ness and no mean powers of reasoning. 



On the 5th of February 1634, Laud was appointed one of the great 

 Committee of Trade and the King's Revenue; and on the death of 

 Weston, lord high treasurer, the management of the treasury was 

 committed by letters patent under the great seal to certain com- 

 missioners, of whom Laud was one. In the year following Laud and 

 the churchmen attained a very high, perhaps it may be said the 

 highest point of their prosperity. Laud thus records the event in his 

 'Diary :' "March 6, Sunday, William Juxon, lord bishop of London, 

 made lord high treasurer of England : no churchman had it since 

 Htnry VII.'s time. I pray God bless him to carry it so, that the 

 church may have honour, and the king and the state service and con- 

 teutment by it ; and now if the church will not hold themselves up 

 under God, I can do no more." The following passage from a letter 

 of the Rev. G. Gerrard, master of the Charterhouse, a correspondent 

 of Stratford's, presents a lively picture of the state of feeling then 

 prevalent among the clergy ; it shows how near having an altogether 

 ecclesiastical government England then was : " The clergy are so 

 high here since the joining of the white sleeves with the white staff, 

 that there is much talk of having a secretary a bishop, Dr. Wren, 

 bishop of Norwich, and a chancellor of the exchequer, Dr. Bancroft, 

 bishop of Oxford, but this comes only from the young fry of the 

 clergy ; little credit is given to it, but it ia observed they swarm 

 mightily about the court." 



On the 14th of June 1637 sentence was passed in the Star Chamber 

 against Bastwick, Burton, and Prynne, for libels, as Laud informs us 

 in his 'Diary,' "against the hierarchy of the Church." The arch- 

 bishop does not however give any definition of what he meant by a 

 libel against the hierarchy of the Church. Prynne's sentence was, to 

 be lined 500(K. to the king, to lose the remainder of hia ears in the 

 pillory, to be branded ou both cheeks with the letters S. L. for Schis- 

 matical Libeller, and to be perpetually imprisoned. The sentence of 

 Bastwick and Burton was nearly similar. Most people thought these 

 men's punishments sufficiently eevere ; not so the primate, as will 

 appear from the following passage of a letter to Wentworth, of August 

 28th, lb'37 : " I have received the copy of the sentence against Pater- 

 son, and am verily of your lordship's mind, that a little more quickness 

 in the government would cure this itch of libelling, and something 

 that is amiss besides." 



But the termination of Laud's career was now approaching. On the 

 18th of November, a few weeks after the meeting of the Long Parlia- 

 ment, he was impeached of high treason by the House of Commons, 

 and committed to the Tower. It is impossible here to enter into the 

 details of the archbishop's trial, of which he has himself written a 

 full, and, on the whole, faithful account. (' History of his Troubles 

 and Trial,' folio, London, 1695.) He defended himself throughout 

 with courage and ability. The j udges gave it to be understood that 

 the charges contained no legal treason; whereupon the Commons 

 changed the impeachment into an ordinance for his execution, to 

 which the Lords assented. Laud produced a pardon from the king, 

 which was disregarded. He was condemned and sentenced to death. 

 The injustice as well as the illegality of this sentence is now admitted 

 on all uands. Laud was beheaded on the 10th of January 1640-1. 



It would be unjust to Laud not to mention his benefactions to 

 learning. Besides making valuable donations of books and manu- 

 scripts to the University of Oxford, he founded in that university a 

 professorship of Arabic in 1636, and endowed it with lauds in the 

 parish of Bray, in the county of Berks. His conduct to John Hales, 

 known by the appellation of the ' ever-memorable,' ia also recorded to 

 his honour. Hales had written a short tract on schism, which was 

 much at variance with Laud's views of church government : this tract 

 had been circulated in manuscript. Hales, in an interview witu Laud, 

 refused to recede from his free notions of ecclesiastical power, but 

 promised that he would not publish the tract. Laud conferred on him 

 a canonry of Windsor. 



LAUDER, SIR THOMAS DICK, Baronet, was born in 1784. He 

 was the seventh baronet, and was the only son of Sir Andrew Lander, 

 the sixth baronet. He succeeded his father in the baronetcy in 1830. 

 He became a contributor to ' Blackwood's Magazine ' at its commence- 

 ment, and furnished numerous articles to that periodical, and others. 

 His first contribution to Blackwood, ' Simon Roy, Gardener at Dum- 

 phail,' attracted considerable attention, and was by some ascribed to 

 the author of ' Waverley.' He also published in early life two novels, 

 'Lochandhu,' and 'The Wolfe of Badenoch.' His paper on 'The 

 Parallel Roads of Gleuroy," which was read before the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh, and published in vol. ix. of their ' Transactions,' con- 

 sists of a description of the geological strata of that district of the 

 Highlands of Scotland. In 1830 Sir T. D. Lauder published an inte- 

 resting ' Account of the Great Floods of August 1829 in the Province 

 of Moray and the adjoining Districts,' 8vo, Edinburgh. In 1837 he 

 published ' Highland Kambles, with Long Tales to shorten the Way,' 

 2 vols. 8vo, Edinburgh, and in 1841 'Legendary Tales of the High- 



