Born at Mayland, Essex, 1605: died Sept. 20, 1662. An English prelate, appointed bishop of Exeter in 1660, and translated to the see of Worcester in May, 1662. He graduated at Oxford; became vicar of Chippenham in 1640; was chaplain to the Earl of Warwick; was appointed dean of Bocking, Essex, in 1641; and was chosen a member of the Assembly of Divines in 1643, but was not allowed to take his seat. He wrote “Cromwell’s Bloody Slaughter House, etc.” (1660), “Tears of the Church” (1659), “Ιερὰ Δάκριυα Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ Suspiria, or the Tears, Sighs, Complaints, and Prayers of the Church of England,” etc.

Icon Basilike

  The particular which you often renewed I do confesse was imparted to me under secrecy, and of which I did not take myself to be at liberty to take notice, and truly when it ceases to be a secret I know nobody will be glad of it except Mr. Milton. I have very often wished I had never been trusted with it.

  It may be expected that we should here mention the “Icon Basiliké,” a work published in the king’s name a few days after his execution. It seems almost impossible, in the controverted parts of history, to say anything which will satisfy the zealots of both parties: but with regard to the genuineness of that production, it is not easy for an historian to fix any opinion which will be entirely to his own satisfaction. The proofs brought to evince that this work is or is not the king’s are so convincing, that if an impartial reader peruse any one side apart, he will think it impossible that arguments could be produced sufficient to counterbalance so strong an evidence; and when he compares both sides, he will be some time at a loss to fix any determination. Should an absolute suspense of judgment be found difficult or disagreeable in so interesting a question, I must confess that I much incline to give the preference to the arguments of the royalists. The testimonies which prove that performance to be the king’s, are more numerous, certain, and direct, than those on the other side. This is the case, even if we consider the external evidence; but when we weigh the internal, derived from the style and composition, there is no manner of comparison. These meditations resemble, in elegance, purity, neatness, and simplicity, the genius of those performances which we know with certainty to have flowed from the royal pen; but are so unlike the bombast, perplexed, rhetorical and corrupt style of Dr. Gauden, to whom they are ascribed, that no human testimony seems sufficient to convince us that he was the author. Yet all the evidences which would rob the king of that honour, tend to prove that Dr. Gauden had the merit of writing so fine a performance, and the infamy of imposing it on the world for the king’s.

  He had a hand in the publication of the “Eikon Basilike,” and has been reputed the author of it; but that he actually wrote it is abundantly disproved by external and internal evidence…. Whoever examines the writings of the royal and reverend authors, will find them specifically different; and must, from taste and sentiment, conclude, as well as from the peculiar circumstances of both writers, that Charles could no more descend to write like Gauden, than Gauden could rise to the purity and dignity of Charles. The style of the divine is more debased with the pedantry, than embellished with the elegancies of learning.

  Like the spurious political legacies, however, of other statesmen, the “Icon Basilike” contained nothing beyond the familiar meditations and the limited observation of a court divine; and, if more chaste and correct than Gauden’s, the style appeared, when impartially examined, to be far more elegant and diffusive than that of the king.

  There is much in the “ΕΙΚΩΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΗ” itself which forbids me to believe that Charles was the real author, though the latter, whoever he were, may have occasionally consulted and copied the royal papers; and the claim of Gauden appears too firmly established to be shaken by the imperfect and conjectural improbabilities which have hitherto been produced against it.

  One topic however remains, on which the biographer of Charles appears called upon to declare an opinion,—the authenticity of the work entitled “Icon Basilike,” published in the name of the king immediately after his death. On a patient examination of the evidence adduced on both sides, she has no hesitation in stating her entire conviction that Dr. Gauden was, as he affirmed himself to be, the real author of that book, for which he was rewarded by Charles II. with a bishopric; and the composition of which Clarendon, with every facility for ascertaining the truth, has carefully abstained from claiming for the king, whose character it was the express purpose of his History to vindicate and to exalt.

  The famous “Icon Basilice,” ascribed to Charles I., may deserve a place in literary history. If we could trust its panegyrists, few books in our language have done it more credit by dignity of sentiment, and beauty of style. It can hardly be necessary for me to express my unhesitating conviction, that it was solely written by Bishop Gauden, who, after the Restoration, unequivocally claimed it as his own. The folly and impudence of such a claim, if it could not be substantiated, are not to be presumed as to any man of good understanding, fair character, and high station, without stronger evidence than has been alleged on the other side; especially when we find that those who had the best means of inquiry, at a time when it seems impossible that the falsehood of Gauden’s assertion should not have been demonstrated, if it were false, acquiesced in his pretensions. We have very little to place against this, except secondary testimony; vague, for the most part, in itself and collected by those whose veracity has not been put to the test like that of Gauden. The style also of the “Icon Basilice” has been identified by Mr. Todd with that of Gauden by the use of several phrases so peculiar, that we can hardly conceive them to have suggested themselves to more than one person. It is, nevertheless, superior to his acknowledged writings. A strain of majestic melancholy is well kept up; but the personated sovereign is rather too theatrical for real nature, the language is too rhetorical and amplified, the periods too artificially elaborated. None but scholars and practised writers employ such a style as this.

  In that year (1692) an honest old clergyman named Walker, who had, in the time of the Commonwealth, been Gauden’s curate, wrote a book which convinced all sensible and dispassionate readers that Gauden, and not Charles the First, was the author of the “Icon Basilike.”

  The death of Charles gave fresh vigor to the Royalist cause, and the new loyalty was stirred to enthusiasm by the publication of the “Eikon Basilike,” a work really due to the ingenuity of Dr. Gauden, a Presbyterian minister, but which was believed to have been composed by the King himself in his later hours of captivity, and which reflected with admirable skill the hopes, the suffering, and the piety of the Royal “martyr.”

  The most important in its influence of all the books brought out during the period of the Church’s proscription was unquestionably the “Eikon Basilike,” a “portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his sufferings.” The skilful work of Dr. Gauden, one of Charles’s chaplains, it expressed with extraordinary fidelity, and at the same time idealised with masterly art, the feelings that had moved the king when his conscience spoke most clearly. The love of his people and the love of God, the steadfast determination not to impair his own prerogative or imperil the fabric of the Church, personal abasement and moral grandeur, these were interwoven with rare delicacy and insight. No book had ever been so popular. It was impossible to suppress it: equally impossible to answer. Forty-seven editions of it were soon exhausted; and if it contained arguments for kingship, it contained ten times as many indirectly for Anglicanism and the system of Laud. The horror and pity which it evoked made Charles a saint and Laud a martyr, and enlisted all the sentiment of the age on the side of the Monarchy and the Church.