LAUD LAUMONITE. 



389 



than it is." In 1634, he commenced a metropolitan 

 visitation, in which the rigour of his proceedings, to 

 produce conformity, was exceedingly unpopular. . In 

 1(335, he was appointed one of the commissioners of 

 the treasury, in which situation he remained a year. 

 The prosecution of Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, 

 for libel, took place in 1632, the odium of which, and 

 the severe sentences that followed, rested principally 

 upon him. In 1637, he procured a decree of the 

 star-chamber, limiting the number of printers, and 

 forbidding the printing of any book not licensed by 

 the bishop of London or archbishop of Canterbury, 

 for the time being, or by the chancellor or vice-chan- 

 cellor of the universities. Catalogues of all books 

 from abroad were also to be furnished to the same 

 authorities; and so arbitrary was the conduct of 

 Charles's ministers, at this period, that numbers, both 

 of the clergy and laity, sought to quit the country. 

 A proclamation was issued to restrain them, unless 

 certificated to be conformable to the discipline of the 

 church. After a lapse of twelve years, a parliament 

 was convened in April, 1640; the commons com- 

 menced by appointing committees of religion and 

 grievances, on which it was suddenly dissolved, after 

 sitting only three weeks. All sorts of means were 

 then put in force to raise supplies, by loan, benevo- 

 lence, ship-money, &c., those who refused payment 

 being fined and imprisoned by the star-chamber or 

 council-table. A clerical convocation was also 

 authorized by the king, to sit, independent of the 

 parliament. This body, besides granting subsidies, 

 prepared a collection of constitutions and canons 

 ecclesiastical, which, being approved by the privy 

 council, was made public, and gave such general 

 disgust to the moderate of all parties, and produced 

 so great a number of petitions to the privy council, 

 that Charles was obliged to suspend them. On the 

 calling of the long- parliament, the new canons were 

 summarily disposed of, as subversive, both of the 

 rights of parliament, and of the liberties and property 

 of the subject, and the long gathering storm imme- 

 diately burst over the head of the archbishop. The 

 next day, articles presented against him by the Scot- 

 tish commissioners were read in the house of lords, 

 which when referred to the commons, a motion was 

 put and carried, that he had been guilty of high trea- 

 son. The celebrated Denzil Holies was immediately 

 sent to the house of lords, to impeach him in the 

 name of all the commons of England, and he was 

 delivered into the custody of the black rod. Feb. 

 26, 1641, fourteen articles of impeachment were 

 brought up from the commons, and he was com- 

 mitted to the Tower. Soon after his commitment, 

 the house of commons ordered him, jointly with those 

 who had passed sentence against Prynne, Bastwick, 

 and Burton, to make them satisfaction for the dam- 

 ages which they had sustained by their sentence and 

 imprisonment. He was also fined 20,000 for his 

 proceedings in the imposition of the canons, and was 

 otherwise treated with extreme severity. He remained 

 in prison three years before he was brought to trial, 

 which at length, on the production of ten additional 

 articles, took place March 12, 1644, and lasted 

 twenty days. Many of the charges against him were 

 insignificant and poorly supported; but it appeared 

 that he was guilty of many arbitrary, illegal, and 

 cruel actions. His own defence was acute and able; 

 and his argument that he could not be justly made 

 responsible for the actions of the whole council if 

 not absolutely a legal, was a strong moral defence. 

 The lords were still more staggered by his counsel 

 showing that, if even guilty of these acts, they 

 amounted not to high treason. A case was made 

 for the judges, who very much questioned if they 

 were so, and the peers deferred giving judgment. 



On this delay, the house of commons passed a bill of 

 attainder, Jan. 4, 1644 45, in a thin house, in which 

 the archbishop was declared guilty of high treason, 

 and condemned to suffer death as unjustifiable a 

 step, in a constitutional point of view, as any of 

 which he was accused. To stop this attainder, he 

 produced the king's pardon, under the great seal } 

 but it was overruled by both houses, and all he could 

 obtain by petitioning, was to have his sentence 

 altered from hanging to beheading. He accordingly 

 met his death with great firmness, Jan. 10, 1644 45, 

 on a scaflbld erected on Tower-hill, in the seventy- 

 second year of his age. His warmest admirers admit 

 his extreme rashness, and little is left which can be 

 fairly pleaded for his severity and violence, except 

 the probability that he acted on principles which he 

 deemed correct. Much praise has been bestowed 

 upon his piety, but his diary shows it to have been 

 mingled with much puerility and superstition; his 

 dreams being regularly recorded, as well as the hopes 

 and fears which they excited. Speaking of his learn- 

 ing and morals, Hume observes, " that he was virtu- 

 ous, if severity of manners alone, and abstinence from 

 pleasure, could deserve that name. He was learned, 

 if polemical knowledge could entitle him to that 

 praise." Among his works are sermons; Annota- 

 tions upon the Life and Death of King James; his 

 Diary, edited by Wharton; the Second Volume of 

 the Remains of Archbishop Laud, written by him- 

 self; Officium Quotidiamim, or a Manual of Private 

 Devotion; and a Summary of Devotion. 



LAUDANUM. See Opium. 



LAUDER, WILLIAM, a literary impostor, who 

 attempted to prove Milton a plagiary, was a native 

 of Scotland. In 1747, he published, in the Gentle- 

 man's Magazine, an Essay on Milton's Use and 

 Imitation of the Moderns, the object of which was 

 to prove that Milton had made free with the works 

 of certain Latin poets of modern date, in the com- 

 position of his Paradise Lost. Mr Douglas, after- 

 wards bishop of Salisbury, in a letter, entitled Milton 

 Vindicated from the Charge of Plagiarism, showed 

 that the passages which had been cited by Lauder, 

 from Massenius, Staphorstius, Taubmannus, and 

 others, had been interpolated by Lauder himself, 

 from Hogg's Latin translation of the Paradise Lost. 

 He subsequently acknowledged his fault, and soon 

 after quitted England for the West Indies, where he 

 died in 1771. See Nichol's Literary Anecdotes. 



LAUDON. See London. 



LAUENBURG, or SAXE-LAUENBURG ; a 

 Danish duchy, belonging to the German confede- 

 racy. It formerly belonged to Hanover, passed with 

 that country, in 1803, under French government, 

 was restored, in 1813, to its former state; in 1816, 

 was ceded to Prussia. The Prussian government 

 afterwards gave it up to Denmark. (See Kiel, 

 Peace of.) It contains, at present, 400 square miles, 

 with 32,000 inhabitants, is situated on the right bank 

 of the Elbe, and is surrounded by the territories of 

 Hamburg, Lubeck, Hanover, Mecklenburg 1 , and 

 Holstein. Grazing and tillage, together with the 

 transit trade, are the sources of its wealth. It 

 exports much wood for fuel and building. The toll 

 on the Elbe, paid in the city of Lauenburg is said to 

 amount to 50,000 Danish dollars annually. Accord- 

 ing to the constitution, confirmed by the king, twenty- 

 two landholders and the three cities have each one 

 vote in the diet. The free peasants in 111 villages 

 are not represented. Ratzeburg, the capital, is 

 situated on an island in a lake. 



LAUMONITE; a mineral, named in honour of 

 Gillet de Laumont. It occurs in aggregated crys- 

 talline masses, deeply striated, or in separate crystals, 

 of several varieties of form, and sometimes in that of 



