The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

IV. Archbishop Laud Enforces Papal Rituals on England

Before entering upon the examination of the various colonial expositors, it is desirable to have before us a brief picture of Archbishop Laud and the events of his creating. These had a marked bearing upon the lives and convictions of many of the early colonial clergy who left England because of the coercive pressure he was able to exert. PFF3 26.1

WILLIAM LAUD (1573-1645), born at Reading, England, became imbued with High Church principles while at Oxford. Ordained in 1601, he rose by preferment to bishop of London (1628), chancellor of Oxford in 1629, and finally Archbishop of Canterbury and primate of all England (1633), thus becoming almost absolute in ecclesiastical power. He introduced extreme ritualism, a semi-Catholic altar, a sacrificial supper, and stressed the divine right of bishops and kings. His theological teaching was strongly Romanist, and he declared his essential agreement with Rome. Charles I, who was a Romanist at heart, Strafford (Charles’ chief civil adviser), and Bishop Laud formed a triumvirate seeking absolutism in church and state, in opposition to Puritanism and democratic tendencies. I They believed in the use of force to achieve these ends. The Star Chamber and an ecclesiastical court, the Court of High Commissions, became a veritable Inquisition, and Calvinistic preaching was prohibited. In Scotland, Laud’s attempt to Anglicize the Scottish church (1635-1637) gave birth to the riot of St. Giles, Edinburgh, which produced the National Covenant, resulting in the “Bishop’s Wars.” Eventually the Long Parliament, on December 18, 1640, impeached Archbishop Laud for treason. Ten weeks later it sent him to the Tower. In 1644 he was voted guilty of endeavoring to subvert the laws, to overthrow the Protestant religion, and to act as an enemy to Parliament. He was beheaded on Tower Hill in January, 1645. This was followed by the Grand Remonstrance, calling for the co-operation of the Scotch Presbyterians, the acceptance of the Covenant, ¹¹ and finally the Westminster Assembly of 1643, with its Confession of Faith of 1648 and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms. ¹² PFF3 26.2