Chapter 35 - Of Apparatchiks, Zealots and Coming Men

Summary

This chapter charts the careers of a series of convicted Laudians; some of them coming men, rising in the establishment, in the court, the church and the universities through the patronage of the prime movers of the movement, most notably Laud himself; others, old men whose commitment to the central tenets of what emerged as Laudianism dated back, in all likelihood, to the 1590s, and who were enabled by the shifts in power in the church and court of the 1630s finally to come out of the woodwork. Still others tried to leverage local issues into appeals to central authority in order to shift the balance of power in their locality and to enhance their own careers. The chapter features a comparison between the successful attempt to do that of Peter Studley in Shrewsbury and the rather less successful attempts of Peter Hausted, whose failure to become the next Peter Heylyn has as much to tell us about the dynamics of Laudianism’s rise, as some of the success stories also told in this chapter.