Tuesday, January 10, 2012

"Once I Was a Clever Boy" on Archbishop Laud

John Whitehead on this blog discusses execution of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury on January 10, 1645:

Archbishop William Laud was judicially murderd by the Long Parliament on January 10th 1645. It is in no way unreasonble to see him as a martyr, although officially the Church of England has never recognised him as such - I don't think he made it to the rather curious calendar contained in Common Worship in 2000. [N.B.: St. Mary's the Virgin at Oxford did include him on the plaque honoring the "Reformation" martyrs, Catholic, Puritan, and Anglican.]

He has, of course, always been esteemed by High Anglicans. Whether he can really be classed as an Anglo-Catholic is open to debate. I think he is more what one would term a High Anglican or a Catholic Anglican, and believed in the branch theory. His Arminian (if that is what it was) base does not, I think, quite follow on from the Elizabethan Church Papists, although I am not sufficiently versed in the subject to make a definite assertion as to the influences that formed him. He did of, of course, belong to St John's College, here in Oxford, which had strong Papistical inclinations stemming from its founder Sir Thomas White. . . .

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