On This Day In History: William Laud Archbishop Of Canterbury Beheaded – On Jan 10, 1645

AncientPages.com - On January 10, 1645, William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was executed at Tower Hill in London, England.

Laud (1573 – 11645) was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633, during the reign of Charles I, and a loyal supporter of the king, but finally, he had to pay for this loyalty with his life.

William Laud. After Anthony van Dyck - National Portrait Gallery

Born in 1573 in Reading, Berkshire, he was educated at Reading Grammar School and St. John's College at Oxford University and later ordained in April 1601.

Laud did not favor Puritanism ("purifying" the Church of England from its "Catholic" practices). He held several posts as bishop, and finally, Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633.

His political importance increased when the crowning of Charles I in 1625 took place. Lau preached that a king's legitimacy came from God himself; under such a system, any crime committed against a king was a crime against God. As Charles I grasped the throne became increasingly fragile, Laud seemed to be on the wrong side of history, representing many things that would come to an end after the  Civil War.

He advocated a close relationship between church and government, the unquestionable authority of the king over his country, and the reduction of Puritan reform in the church.

In 1640 Laud was arrested and became a hated person, often presented in pamphlets and protests of people against him. In December 1640, he was convicted of high treason, attempts to subvert the laws, to overthrow the Protestant religion".

He was imprisoned in the Tower of London. In 1644, amid the Civil War, he was beheaded.

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