Archbishop Laud, 1573 - 1645

The most powerful man in England during the so-called "Eleven Years Tyranny" from 1629-1640, archbishop of Canterbury William Laud was thrown from power in 1640 and executed on Tower Hill during the Civil War. He remains a controversial figure in English history, either denounced as a tyrant and bigot or extolled as a statesman and martyr. An esteemed scholar uncovers the social ideal that lay behind Laud's political and religious conservatism--an ideal fatally obscured by the archbishop's human limitations. "A book that is, by any standards, brilliant."--New Statesman.