Archbishop Laud 1573-1645

by Hugh Trevor-Roper

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.

Genres: Biography, History

464 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1988

About the author

Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton, was an English historian. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford.
Trevor-Roper was a polemicist and essayist on a range of historical topics, but particularly England in the 16th and 17th centuries and Nazi Germany. In the view of John Philipps Kenyon, "some of [Trevor-Roper's] short essays have affected the way we think about the past more than other men's books". This is echoed by Richard Davenport-Hines and Adam Sisman in the introduction to One Hundred Letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper (2014): "The bulk of his publications is formidable ... Some of his essays are of Victorian length. All of them reduce large subjects to their essence. Many of them ... have lastingly transformed their fields." On the other hand, his biographer Adam Sisman also writes that "the mark of a great historian is that he writes great books, on the subject which he has made his own. By this exacting standard Hugh failed."
Trevor-Roper's most commercially successful book was titled The Last Days of Hitler (1947). It emerged from his assignment as a British intelligence officer in 1945 to discover what happened in the last days of Hitler's bunker. From interviews with a range of witnesses and study of surviving documents, he demonstrated that Hitler was dead and had not escaped from Berlin. He also showed that Hitler's dictatorship was not an efficient unified machine but a hodge-podge of overlapping rivalries.
Trevor-Roper's reputation was "severely damaged" in 1983 when he authenticated the Hitler Diaries shortly before they were shown to be forgeries.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

To him the Church was a great social institution, designed to praise God with its voice, but with its hand to regulate the anti-social appetites of individuals by the imposition of external justice.

Trevor-Roper provides a sober analysis of William Laud (1573–1645), such a divisive figure in the England before the Civil War, when the sectarian baggage of the(Counter) reformation blazed on the continent in the 30 Year War. The portrait provided of the ill-fated (and hated) Archbishop of Canterbury is a of a humorless man who wanted to achieve the greatest good, one free of heresy. These ambitions and practices have consequences, grave mortal consequences. The author doesn't flinch from revealing this but ultimately hopes for a balanced all-too-human visage to emerge from the mists of history. Trevor-Roper aims for this elucidation without distraction. Well, almost. The one exception is a chapter on the plight of the theatre during Charles I. Odd, that.

This book was absorbed exclusively in airports and on planes. The locale did contribute to its placid perusal and contemplation. I remain grateful for that opportunity. Somewhere along the way I thought of Arendt's verdict on the dearth of thinking in Adolph Eichmann. There are important distinctions with that case but a numb fatigue restrains.