William Laud was born in 1573 in Reading, the son of a cloth merchant. He received a good education at Reading School and St John's College, Oxford, where he excelled in classics and theology. He was ordained in 1601 and began a career as Fellow of St John's, Oxford, where he became known as a theologian of precise learning and strong opinions about proper liturgical practice and ecclesiastical polity.

Rising through the Church, Laud served as chaplain to Charles I and was appointed Bishop of St Davids (Wales) in 1621. He moved rapidly: Bishop of Bath and Wells (1626), Bishop of London (1628), and finally Archbishop of Canterbury (1633)—the highest ecclesiastical office in England. As archbishop, Laud became the principal religious advisor to King Charles I and shaped royal religious policy.

Laud's theological project was twofold: first, to defend episcopal church government and apostolic succession against Puritan attacks on Church hierarchy, and second, to restore ceremonial dignity and sacramental theology to English worship, moving away from the relative austerity of early Protestant practice. He emphasized the beauty of holiness—fitting churches with adequate furnishings, restoring altar rails, recovering traditional vestments and ceremonies. His theological writings, particularly the Conference with Fisher (written as a response to Jesuit John Fisher's theological attack on Anglicanism), demonstrated sophisticated argument for the via media—a middle way between Rome and Geneva.

Laud's religious policies were controversial and generated intense opposition from Puritan MPs and ministers who saw his reforms as neo-Catholic and a betrayal of Protestant gains. When the English Civil War erupted (1642), Parliament moved against Laud. He was impeached on charges of treason and high crime (1640), imprisoned, tried, and condemned to death. He was executed by beheading on January 10, 1645, at age seventy-one. His final days were spent in prayer and writing; his death was seen by supporters as martyrdom for the faith and by opponents as justice against a man who had corrupted the Reformation.

Laud's tradition is deeply contested. To Anglo-Catholics (especially in the nineteenth century), he was a martyr and hero—a bishop who stood firm against Puritan assault on apostolic order and liturgical tradition. To Puritans and their heirs, he was a dangerous reactionary who betrayed the Reformation and sought to restore Catholic practices. To modern secular historians, he is often portrayed as a religious zealot caught in political forces beyond his control.

Laud had no medieval cult or canonization. However, the BCP 2019 designates him as a 'Martyr' (red vestments) on January 10, the date of his execution. This designation encodes a particular Anglican memory: that he died defending the faith rather than betraying it. Anglo-Catholic tradition has always venerated him; Victorian high-church Anglicans saw in Laud a precedent for their own liturgical and theological revival. His Conference with Fisher remained influential in Anglican apologetics. However, his reputation has become more complex in modern scholarship: historians acknowledge his genuine theological learning while also recognizing the authoritarian character of his ecclesiastical policies and his role in alienating Parliament before the Civil War.

His inclusion in the calendar as Martyr is itself historically weighted—it represents modern Anglican (particularly Anglo-Catholic) judgment rather than ancient tradition or universal consensus.