William Laud Quotes

William Laud was a bishop in the Church of England. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Charles I in 1633, Laud was a key advocate of Charles I's religious reforms; he was arrested by Parliament in 1640 and executed towards the end of the First English Civil War in January 1645.

Laud believed in episcopalianism, or rule by bishops. "Laudianism" was a reform movement that emphasised liturgical ceremony and clerical hierarchy, enforcing uniformity within the Church of England, as outlined by Charles. Its often highly ritualistic aspects prefigure what are now known as high church views.

In theology, Laud was accused of Arminianism, favouring doctrines of the historic church prior to the Reformation and defending the continuity of the English Church with the primitive and medieval church, and opposing Calvinism. On all three grounds, he was regarded by Puritan clerics and laymen as a formidable and dangerous opponent. His use of the Star Chamber to persecute opponents such as William Prynne made him deeply unpopular. Wikipedia  

✵ 7. October 1573 – 10. January 1645
William Laud photo
William Laud: 11 quotes0 likes

Famous William Laud Quotes

“I had a serious offer made me again to be a Cardinal. … But my answer again was, that something dwelt within me which would not suffer that, till Rome were other than it is.”

William Laud

Source: Diary (17 August 1633), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume III: Devotions, Diary, and History (1847), p. 219

“Never were there more gross absurdities, nor half so many in so short a time, committed in any public meeting; and for a National Assembly never did the Church of Christ see the like.”

William Laud

Source: Letter to the Marquis of Hamilton (3 December 1638), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume VI—Part II. Letters—Notes on Bellarmine (1857), p. 547

“You cannot have a greater desire to conform Ireland to the Church of England, than I (and this with as seeming great a desire of the King) to conform Scotland to the Church of England.”

William Laud

Source: Letter to Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford (8 October 1638), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume VII—Letters (1860), p. 489

“I know the Jesuits are very cunning at these tricks; but if you have no more hold of your printers, than that the press must lie thus open to their corruption.”

William Laud

Source: Letter to William Chillingworth (15 September 1637), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume V—History of His Chancellorship, &c (1853), p. 184

“[P]rivate spirits are too giddy to rest upon Scripture, and too heady and shallow to be acquainted with demonstrative arguments.”

William Laud

Source: A Relation of the Conference betweene William Lawd...and Mr. Fisher the Jesuite (1639), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume II: Conference with Fisher (1849), p. 272

“The time was, before this miserable rent in the Church of Christ—which I think no true Christian can look upon but with a bleeding heart—that you and we were all of one belief. That belief was tainted, in tract and corruption of times, very deeply.”

William Laud

Source: A Relation of the Conference betweene William Lawd...and Mr. Fisher the Jesuite (1639), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume II: Conference with Fisher (1849), p. 141

“[T]he King is God's immediate lieutenant upon earth; and therefore one and the same action is God's by ordinance, and the King's by execution. And the power which resides in the King is not any assuming to himself, nor any gift from the people, but God's power, as well in, as over, him.”

William Laud

Source: Sermon at Whitehall (19 June 1625), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume I: Sermons (1847), p. 94

William Laud Quotes about God

“For my care of this Church, the reducing of it into order, the upholding of the external worship of God in it, and the settling of it to the rules of its first reformation, are the causes (and the sole causes, whatever are pretended) of all this malicious storm, which hath lowered so black upon me, and some of my brethren.”

William Laud

Source: Speech in the Star Chamber at the censure of John Bastwick, Henry Burton and William Prynne (16 June 1637), quoted in The Works of the Most Reverend Father in God, William Laud, sometime Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Volume VI: Part I (1847), p. 42

Similar authors

Thomas Cranmer photo
Thomas Cranmer2
leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterb… None
François Fénelon photo
François Fénelon43
Catholic bishop None
Thomas Wolsey photo
Thomas Wolsey4
English political figure and cardinal None
Anne Boleyn photo
Anne Boleyn3
Second wife of Henry VIII of England, mother of Queen Eliza… None
Richard Hooker photo
Richard Hooker6
English bishop and Anglican Divine None
Alessandro Piccolomini photo
Alessandro Piccolomini9
Italian writer and philosopher None