Talk:William Laud

Homosexual leanings
I do not have access to the source quoted in this section but it appears Contaldo80 does. Can you clarify a few things so we can remove the "It is believed" weasel words from this section:

Does MacCulloch have evidence of, speculate about or reference other people's speculation about Laud having homosexual leanings?

Does MacCulloch have evidence of, speculate about or reference other people's speculation about sexual fantasies in private diaries? Just nigel (talk) 00:41, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * "It is believed that Laud managed homosexual leanings discreetly, and that he confided his erotic dreams about Buckingham and others to a private diary". Commentators/ historians believe he managed the leanings discretely. There is evidence of his erotic dreams recorded in his diaries. Contaldo80 (talk) 13:45, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

This puerile attempt to label Laud a closeted homosexual does not belong on the page at all. A small comment by queer theory and gay historian MacCulloch, 400 years later is not relevant. Show the text, don't run from it. Name the suggested other historians over the last 400 years who interpreted the dream as truly homosexually erotic (where are they?) and then quote dream interpreters and psychologists to chime in on whether even having a dream where one commits an act means that one has those tendencies at all, because there are plenty of theologians, of which Laud was one, who would interpret any dream such as this as arising from another source, such as demonic oppression. Moreover, there are plenty of dream interpreters who will say that even if Laud had an erotic dream about Buckingham, the meaning is not homosexual, but signifies a thoroughly different meaning.

New images
I've uploaded a number of engravings of William Laud by Wenceslas Hollar at William Laud; feel free to use any of these. I've added the image of the trial, which I think is very informational. Dcoetzee 08:42, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Saint box or Bishop box
I changed the archbishop infobox to a saint infobox to emphasize Laud's inclusion on the liturgical calendar within (at least much of) the Anglican communion, and because most of the dates in archbishop box were blank. However, the predecessor and successor dates don't show, even when I tried putting them into the saints section of the infobox. I hope someone can fix them and/or add the ordination, consecration and other info missing from the archbishop box. I don't have time, plus I don't have a phone data connection if I went to VTS.

Frankly, I tried editing out some of the passive constructions so pervasive in this article, but stopped. IMHO the article needs severe rewriting because of the footnoting style (lots of refs to ODNB) that probably conceal timeline problems.Jweaver28 (talk) 20:46, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Edits by User:Britannicus
I'm concerned that the use of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography in these edits goes well beyond any notion of fair use. For example, this diff.

The original reads:

"Laud had been accused of popish sympathies since his early days in Oxford, and the charges showed no sign of abating in the 1630s. Reports of his sympathy to Rome and hostility towards puritanism generated unwise hopes on the other side. He was twice offered a cardinal's hat in the weeks immediately following Abbot's death, probably by the English Benedictine David Codner—an offer which he rejected with the reflection that ‘something dwelt within me which would not suffer that, till Rome were other than it is’ (Works, 3.219). He made a point of refusing to meet the unofficial papal emissary Gregorio Panzani and was hostile towards the papal agent George Con. He was distressed by his friend Kenelm Digby's conversion, and after Lord Newport complained directly to him of his wife's conversion in 1637 Laud raised the problem of court conversions at the council board and secured the passage of a royal proclamation against them."

The added content reads:

"Due to his stringent opposition to Puritanism and his emphasis on ceremony, Laud was accused of harbouring Catholic symphaties. He was twice offered the position of Cardinal in the Catholic Church, possibly by the English Benedictine David Codner. However Laud rejected this offer, saying that "something dwelt within me which would not suffer that, till Rome were other than it is". He also refused to meet the unoffocial papel emissary Gregorio Panzani and showed hostility to the papl agent George Con. He reacted to his friend Kenelm Digby's conversion to Rome with distress and raised the problem of conversions to Rome by members of the court at a council board and secured a royal proclamation against them."

This is not an isolated example. This is paraphrase: Close paraphrasing is an essay with a definition: "Close paraphrasing is the superficial modification of material from another source." That fits the bill. As it says there, "Paraphrasing rises to the level of copyright infringement when there is substantial similarity between an article and a source."

This article has currently 31 inline references to Anthony Milton's ODNB article on Laud. The single reference that follows the passage I have cited (in its version in the current article) covers a precis of three paragraphs from the ODNB, with further close paraphrasing.

I don't think this is an acceptable way to write a Wikipedia article. I think it is clear copyright infringement. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:00, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you could edit the page.--Britannicus (talk) 13:14, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I could do that. But I could, and I think should, nominate the page for deletion under copyvio, which would involve starting afresh in some fashion. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Given the comment above by, I'm rewriting the article at User:Charles Matthews/Drafting area/William Laud. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:18, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you, User:Charles Matthews, for working on a rewrite. I have moved your draft into position. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:27, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Execution
>Arrested in 1640, he was executed in 1645.

Executed for what? I realize this is in the introduction but to leave it there without at least a minor explanation is frustrating for the reader who may not have the time to go hunting through the whole article just to find out why. Rissa, copy editor (talk) 01:59, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Rectorship 1622 to 1626
According to this Laud was rector of a parish (Rudbaxton) from 1622 to 1626, but the article says from 1621 to 1627 he was Bishop of St Davids. One of them presumably is wrong, or perhaps he fulfilled both posts at the same time? I'll leave it to editors interested in Laud to decide, as I'm not interested in Laud, but was working on the parish article.  Tony Holkham   (Talk)  12:26, 16 May 2020 (UTC)