Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Haywood, William
HAYWOOD, WILLIAM (1600?–1663), royalist divine, born about 1600 in Ballance Street, Bristol, was the son of a cooper. He matriculated at Oxford as a scholar of St. John's College on 15 Nov. 1616, and proceeded B.A. on 11 May 1620, and M.A. on 16 April 1624, commencing B.D. on 12 May 1630 (Wood, Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 392, 415, 456). He became a fellow of his college; was created D.D. in 1636 (ib. i. 495), and attracted the favour of Laud. He became one of Laud's domestic chaplains, and chaplain in ordinary to Charles I. ‘I preferred him not to his majesty,’ Laud wrote, ‘till he had preached divers times ge,in court with great approbation’ (Laud, Works, iv. 295). Haywood was afterwards prebendary of St. Paul's on 21 Nov. 1631 (Le Neve, Fasti, ed. Hardy, ii. 376); rector of Laindon, Essex, on 8 Dec. in the same year (Newcourt, Repertorium, ii. 357); rector of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, Middlesex, about 1636 (ib. i. 613; cf. Strafford Letters, ii. 157); and was installed prebendary of Westminster on 28 Sept. 1638 (Le Neve, iii. 358). Upon the petition of his parishioners, who exhibited a long series of articles against him, he was ejected from his vicarage in 1641, and was imprisoned. Haywood, as Laud's chaplain, had licensed for the press several books suspected of a Roman catholic tendency, and resigned the chaplaincy in consequence. Laud was charged at his trial with responsibility for all Haywood's actions. At Laud's request he was brought from prison in 1643 to give evidence on the archbishop's behalf. Laud desired that Haywood should attend him at his execution, but parliament refused permission. Reduced to poverty on being released from prison, he kept for some time a private school in Wiltshire, in the name of his son, but recovered all his preferments after the Restoration. Haywood was buried in Westminster Abbey on 17 July 1663. By his wife Alice (d. 1675) he left an only son, John, who died in 1664 (Chester, Westminster Abbey Registers, pp. 158, 160, 187). He published several sermons.
[Authorities in the text; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 634–7; Laud's Works, iii. 213, iv. 97, 210, 281 sq.]