This narrow materialism was the true cause of his fatal influence both in church and state. In his own character it produced the somewhat blunted moral sense which led to the few incidents in his career which need moral defence, his performance of the marriage ceremony between his first patron Lord Devonshire and the latter’s mistress, the divorced wife of Lord Rich, an act completely at variance with his principles; his strange intimacy with Buckingham; his love of power and place. Indistinguishable from his personal ambition was his passion for the aggrandisement of the church and its predominance in the state. He was greatly delighted at the foolish appointment of Bishop Juxon as lord treasurer in 1636. “No churchman had it,” he cries exultingly, “since Henry VII.’s time, ... and now if the church will not hold up themselves under God, I can do no more.” Spiritual influence, in Laud’s opinion, was not enough for the church. The church as the guide of the nation in duty and godliness, even extending its activity into state affairs as a mediator and a moderator, was not sufficient. Its power must be material and visible, embodied in great places of secular administration and enthroned in high offices of state. Thus the church, descending into the political arena, became identified with the doctrines of one political party in the state—doctrines odious to the majority of the nation—and at the same time became associated with acts of violence and injustice, losing at once its influence and its reputation. Equally disastrous to the state was the identification of the king’s administration with one party in the church, and that with the party in an immense minority not only in the nation but even among the clergy themselves.
Bibliography.—All Laud’s works are to be found in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (7 vols.), including his sermons (of no great merit), letters, history of the chancellorship, history of his troubles and trial, and his remarkable diary, the MSS. of the last two works being the property of St John’s College. Various modern opinions of Laud’s career can be studied in T. Longueville’s Life of Laud, by a Romish Recusant (1894); Congregational Union Jubilee Lectures, vol. i. (1882); J. B. Mozley’s Essay on Laud; Archbishop Laud, by A. C. Benson (1887); Wm. Laud, by W. H. Hutton (1895); Archbishop Laud Commemoration, ed. by W. F. Collins (lectures, bibliography, catalogue of exhibits, 1895); Hook’s Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury; and H. Bell, Archbishop Laud and Priestly Government (1907).
(P. C. Y.)
LAUD (Lat. laus), a term meaning praise, now rarely found in this sense except in poetry or hymns. Lauds is the name for the second of the offices of the canonical hours in the Roman breviary, so called from the three laudes or psalms of praise, cxlviii.-cl. which form part of the service (see [Breviary] and [Hours, Canonical]).
LAUDANUM, originally the name given by Paracelsus to a famous medical preparation of his own composed of gold, pearls, &c. (Opera, 1658, i. 492/2), but containing opium as its chief ingredient. The term is now only used for the alcoholic tincture of opium (q.v.). The name was either invented by Paracelsus from Lat. laudare to praise, or was a corrupted form of “ladanum” (Gr. λήδανον, from Pers. ladan), a resinous juice or gum obtained from various kinds of the Cistus shrub, formerly used medicinally in external applications and as a stomachic, but now only in perfumery and in making fumigating pastilles, &c.
LAUDER, SIR THOMAS DICK, Bart. (1784-1848), Scottish author, only son of Sir Andrew Lauder, 6th baronet, was born at Edinburgh in 1784. He succeeded to the baronetcy in 1820. His first contribution to Blackwood’s Magazine in 1817, entitled “Simon Roy, Gardener at Dunphail,” was by some ascribed to Sir Walter Scott. His paper (1818) on “The Parallel Roads of Glenroy,” printed in vol. ix. of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, first drew attention to the phenomenon in question. In 1825 and 1827 he published two romances, Lochandhu and the Wolf of Badenoch. He became a frequent contributor to Blackwood and also to Tait’s Magazine, and in 1830 he published An Account of the Great Floods of August 1829 in the Province of Moray and adjoining Districts. Subsequent works were Highland Rambles, with Long Tales to Shorten the Way (2 vols. 8vo, 1837), Legendary Tales of the Highlands (3 vols, 12mo, 1841), Tour round the Coasts of Scotland (1842) and Memorial of the Royal Progress in Scotland (1843). Vol. i. of a Miscellany of Natural History, published in 1833, was also partly prepared by Lauder. He was a Liberal, and took an active interest in politics; he held the office of secretary to the Board of Scottish Manufactures. He died on the 29th of May 1848. An unfinished series of papers, written for Tait’s Magazine shortly before his death, was published under the title Scottish Rivers, with a preface by John Brown, M.D., in 1874.