This diminutive “martinet” made himself odious to the rising Puritan party through his rigorous (some would say narrow-minded) enforcement of so-called “High Church” dogma and decor. It was a time when believers were prepared to rend the fabric of the church over a literal fabric, the surplice worn by the clergy — among other innumerable points of doctrinal rectitude.
Laud's run as Archbishop of Canterbury also happened to coincide with Charles I‘s 11-year personal rule, sans parliament. The overweening divine's influence on secular as well as religious policy would do his sovereign no favors in the public mind.
Roughly enforcing an unpopular minority position, Laud got the woodblock blogosphere in a tizzy with heavy-handed stunts like having dissenters' ears cut off.
That's the sort of thing that'll give a guy an image problem. The king's fool, Archibald Armstrong, is supposed to have tweaked our overweening subject (and warned the king against his influence*) with the punny aphorism,
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