SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TO 1660 25
for stubbornly and in the end irresistibly was em-
bodied in the man who was the principal counsellor
of Charles I, William Laud. Laud became Atch-
bishop of Canterbury in 1633 and died on the scaffold
in 1645. In the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial
Series, under date of April 28, 1634, Laud appeats at
the head of a Commission with apparently the widest
powers ‘ for making laws and orders for government
of English colonies planted in foreign parts’; and
two years later, under date of April 10, 1636, he heads
another Commission ‘ for government of all persons
within the colonies and plantations beyond the seas
according to the laws and constitutions there.’
Clarendon wrote of Laud as a man of great parts
and courage and exemplary virtues, but who, being
assured of the righteousness of his ends, never studied
the easiest ways to them. ‘He did court persons too
little.” 1 The scrupulous fairness of Dr. Rawson
Gardiner has corrected for us the picture of Laud
drawn by Macaulay, but none the less Gardiner wrote
that of all the men of the time Laud was the least fitted
to be entrusted with political power; such was his
belief in the unbounded efficacy of external forms and
institutions combined with his complete ignorance of
human nature. Laud was no bigot as regards men’s
beliefs, ‘ but the liberty which he claimed for men’s
minds. he denied to their actions.’ 2
‘ Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion (1826 ed.), vol. i, pp. 159 and
165.
2 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of
James I to the Disgrace of Chief Justice Colle (1863), 2 vols., vol. ii,
chap. x, p. 41, and Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage (1869), 2 vols.,
vol. i, pp. 195-6.