LAUD AS BISHOP OF LONDON.

Western Star, Issue 1339, 23 March 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

LAUD AS BISHOP OF LONDON.

Laud was in his fifty-second year when the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham, at Portsmouth, by a debauched maniac named Felton, out of private enmity, threw another great chance into his hands he became First Minister of the Crown. He had been Bishop of Bath and Wells for nearly two years, and now he became Bishop of London. Charles already, by a fatal instinct, had begun to select men for his advisers and ministers who were uncompromising advocates of the autocracy of the Crown. Laud was one of these. Strafford another. It is necessary to remember that the common unjudging estimate of Charles as a man with elements of weakness and sentimentality in his composition is utterly unfounded. He was tenacious and stubborn, intensely irritated at the smallest show of disobedience, profoundly indifferent to public opinion, and entirely under the domination o f one idea—the prerogative of monarchy. Such a character was sure to attract to,itself characters working on similar lines—and politics and religion shared the field of life ia those days. There did not then exist that large and growing class who are indifferent to both. So Laud and Strafford with their magnificent indifference to opinion, their absolute determination to be obeyed, their strong illogical minds, accepting and never questioning facts, taking the Koyal Supremacy for granted, and Episcopacy as an institution dear to God, necessarily became his chosen ministers. It was a triumvirate working single-handed against the whole force of a nation —a triumvirate, it is true, with certain mechanical and traditional advantages. But in the face of the great explosion of democracy the triumvirate was blown away.—From Mr Benson s Archbishop Laud : A Study.