The English prelate William Laud (1573-1645) was archbishop of Canterbury and architect of Charles I's personal government. He was executed by the Long Parliament.

William Laud was the son of a Reading clothier. He was educated in the town grammar school and received a scholarship to St. John's College, Oxford. He became a fellow and then was president of the college from 1611 to 1621. As an undergraduate, he had become aligned with the anti-Puritans, or Arminians, who opposed the doctrines of predestination and Presbyterianism. Instead, they believed in the continued manifestation of divine will in the historical development of the Church and therefore in the divine basis of episcopacy. Laud subscribed in theory to Arminian tolerance of doctrinal differences, but in action he was a believer in rigid enforcement of outward uniformity in worship, and he found strength in institutional authority.

Laud's beliefs about theology and church government were...