LAUD
Laud was the Protestant Archbishop of
Canterbury under Charles I of England. He
belonged to that generation which was born
somewhat before the year 1600 and which was
old by the middle of the seventeenth century—
that is by the time that each party in the great
religious quarrel of the Reformation was dimly
appreciating that the battle was a drawn one,
and that there could not be a complete victory
on either side.
It will be remembered that the middle of
the seventeenth century, and more particularly
the date 1648 (The Treaties of Westphalia)
marks that moment of exhaustion on the two
sides. After it, what used to be united Christen-
dom was permanently divided into the two
camps of the Catholic and Protestant cultures,
the boundaries of which have not appreciably
changed from that day to this. Laud, as Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, was the principal figure
in English official Protestantism; that is, in the
new establishment set up by William Cecil,
and known as "The Church of England'*
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