GAUDEN, JOHN

GAUDEN, JOHN, an English prelate of considerable talents, but of a temporising and interested character, was the son of John Gauden, vicar of Mayfield in Essex, where he was born in the year 1605. Having received

Gauden. the rudiments of his education at Bury St Edmund's in Suffolk, he was removed to St John's College, Cambridge, where he made considerable proficiency in learning, and took his degree in arts. About 1630 he was presented to the vicarage of Chippenham in Cambridgeshire, and he also obtained the rectory of Brightwell in Berkshire. This last preferment having brought him near Oxford, he entered himself of Wadham College in that university, and became tutor to some noblemen and several young gentlemen who were placed under his care. In 1635, he took his degree as bachelor in divinity, and in 1641 he was received as doctor in the theological faculty. At the commencement of the civil war he had become chaplain to the Earl of Warwick, a Presbyterian leader; and having ranged himself on the same side as his patron, he, in the end of November, after the close imprisonment of Lord Strafford, preached a sermon before the House of Commons, which proved so agreeable to that assembly, that it is said they presented him with a large silver tankard, bearing the inscription, Donum honorarium populi Anglicani in Parlamento congregati, Johanni Gauden; a token of their esteem, which, if the story be true, may seem to be the stronger for its singularity and unseemliness.¹ His discourse seems to have consisted of an invective against the ecclesiastical policy of the court; and it was not only preached at a critical time, but on the solemn occasion of the sacrament being first taken by the whole house. As a reward for so conspicuous a service to the parliamentary cause, he soon afterwards received the valuable living of Bocking in Essex, which he held through all the succeeding changes of government; forbearing of necessity to use the liturgy, and complying with all the conditions which the law then required from the beneficed clergy. He was also chosen one of the assembly of divines who met at Westminster in 1643; but it has been disputed whether he took the covenant, though his own evasive answers seem rather to confirm the opinion that he had. It is said that he wrote a Protestation against the trial of the king in 1648, and likewise an Invective against those of the army and their abettors who murdered Charles I.; but neither of these pieces was published until two years after the Restoration; and even if the former had appeared at the needful time, it would have been disregarded, seeing that the solemn declaration of all the Presbyterian clergy of London against bringing Charles to trial had proved unavailing.

But the most remarkable production with which the name of Gauden has been connected is the famous Eikon Basilike, or Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings, which appeared after the execution of Charles I., and in the course of a year passed through fifty editions. The Eikon Basilike seems to have been intended to produce a favourable effect during the king's trial; but its publication was retarded until some days after his death, by the jealous and rigorous precautions adopted by the regicides. The impression made on the public by a work which purported to convey the pious and eloquent language of a dying king could not fail to be very considerable; and though its genuineness was from the beginning doubted or disbelieved by some, including Milton, Goodwyn, and Lilly, yet unbounded faith in its authenticity as the production of Charles himself soon became one of the fundamental articles of the royalist creed. At the Restoration, Gauden was promoted to the see of Exeter, whence he was in 1662 translated to that of Worcester. But he was so far from being satisfied with this promotion, that he looked upon it as an act of injustice. He had, it

appears, applied to the king for the rich bishopric of Winchester, which he flattered himself with the hopes of obtaining; and, when he failed, the vexation he suffered on account of this disappointment is believed to have hastened his death, which took place on the 20th of September 1662. Gauden was the author of many controversial pieces, suited to the temper of the times, and to his own views, which were always those of a selfish and temporising divine.

The question, Who wrote the Eikon Basilike? which Gauden published as King Charles's private meditations, has, as our readers must be aware, been long agitated; but the controversy seems at length to have been ended by a verdict upon the whole case in favour of Gauden as the author. At the moment of the Restoration, this complying person, who had thundered before the parliament against the ecclesiastical policy of the court, appears to have had as little public claim on the favour of Charles II. as any clergyman who had conformed to the religious principles of the parliament and the protectorate; and he was accordingly stigmatized by some zealous royalists as "the false apostate." He was sufficiently a Presbyterian in party to make him no favourite with the court; yet he was not so decided a Presbyterian in principle as to have that influence amongst his party which could make him worth so high a price as a mitre. Those who dispute his claim to be acknowledged as the writer of the Eikon, will not ascribe his preferment to transcendent abilities; he is not mentioned as having ever shown kindness to the royalists; there is no trace of his having corresponded with the exiled court; he contributed nothing to the recall of the king, nor indeed had he the power of performing such atoning services. Yet, though thus without the shadow of a claim to preferment on any public ground, and indeed one of the last persons whom the court might be supposed to have been inclined to promote, Gauden was, nevertheless, on the 3d of November 1660, appointed Bishop of Exeter, and, in a few months, he received no less than £20,000 for the renewal of leases. Nor was he at all satisfied with this advancement. In fact, he had scarcely arrived at his episcopal palace, when, on the 21st of December, he wrote a letter to Lord Chancellor Clarendon, complaining bitterly of the "distress, infelicity, and horror" of such a bishopric, and lamenting "a hard fate which," he reminds the chancellor, he "had before deprecated." "I am not so unconscious," he adds, "to the service done to the church and to his Majesty's family, as to bear with patience the ruin heaped on me. Are these the effects of his liberal expressions, who told me I might have what I would desire?" Five days afterwards (26th December 1660) he wrote another letter, in which he says, "Dr Morley once offered me my option, upon account of some service which he thought I had done extraordinary for the church and royal family, of which he told me your Lordship was informed." Gauden appears soon afterwards to have written to Sir E. Nicholas, secretary of state, a letter expressed so as to be read by the king; and on the 19th January 1661, he received an answer, in which there is the following sentence: "As for your own particular, he (the king) desires you not to be discouraged at the poverty of your bishopric at present, and if that answer not the expense that was promised you, his Majesty will take you so particularly into his care, that he bids me assure you shall have no cause to remember Bocking." On the 21st of January the importunate prelate again addressed to Clarendon a letter explicitly stating the nature of the services, which was probably rendered necessary, in his opinion, by the continued silence of the

chancellor, and distinctly claiming "what goes under the late blessed king's name, the Book or Portraiture of his Majesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings," as his own production. "This book and figure," he says, "was wholly and only my invention, making, and designe, in order to vindicate the king's wisdome, honor, and piety. My wife indeed was conscious to it, and had an hand in disguising the letters of that copy which I sent to the king in the Isle of Wight by favour of the late Marquise of Hertford, which was delivered to the king by the now Bishop of Winchester (DUPPA): his majesty graciously accepted, owned, and adopted it as his sense and genius, not only with great approbation, but admiration. Hee kept it with hym; and though his cruel murthers went on to perfect his martyrdom, yet God preserved and prospered the book to revive his honor, and to redeem his majesty's name from that grave of contempt and abhorrence or inamy, in which they aimed to bring hym." The bishop wrote three more letters to Clarendon on the 25th January, the 20th February, and the 6th March; and, at last, the chancellor replied to his numerous applications in a letter dated the 13th of March 1661, in which Gauden's claim is unequivocally admitted. After many apologies or delay, and professions of good will towards his impuritate correspondent, Clarendon says, "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 gladd of it but Mr Milton; I have very often wished I had never been trusted with it."

Now this, taken in conjunction with Gauden's immediate promotion to the episcopal dignity after the Restoration, and the letter of the secretary of state, Sir E. Nichols, above referred to, appears to us to be decisive of the whole question as to the authorship of the Eikon. "It proper to remark here," says Sir James Mackintosh,¹ that all the letters of Gauden are still extant, indorsed by Lord Clarendon, or by his eldest son. In the course of three months, then, it appears that Gauden, with unusual importunity and confidence, with complaints which were disguised reproaches, and sometimes with an approach to menaces, asserted his claim to be richly rewarded as the author of the Eikon. He affirms that it was sent to the king by the Duke of Somerset, who died about a month before his first letter, and delivered to his majesty by Dr Duppa, bishop of Winchester, who was still alive. He adds, that he had acquainted Charles II. with the secret through the Duke of York; that Morley, then bishop of Worcester, had informed Clarendon of it; and that Morley himself had declared the value of the service to such as to entitle Gauden to chuse his own preferment. Gauden thus enabled Clarendon to convict him of falsehood, if his tale was untrue, in three or four circumstances, differing indeed in their importance as to the main question, but equally material to his own veracity. A single word from Duppa would have overwhelmed him with infamy. Some of the communications were made before the Duke of Somerset's death, on the 24th of October. How easy was it for the chancellor to ascertain whether the information had been given to the king and his brother! Morley was his bosom friend, and the spiritual director of his daughter Anne, duchess of York. How many other persons might have been quietly sounded by the numerous confidential agents of a great minister, on a transaction which had occurred only twelve years before! Suppose that a statesman then at the zenith of his greatness could not discover the truth on this subject

without a noise like a judicial inquiry, would betray a singular ignorance of affairs. Did Clarendon relinquish without a struggle his belief in a book which had doubtless touched his feelings when he read it as the work of his royal master? Even curiosity might have led Charles II., when receiving the blessing of Duppa on his (Duppa's) deathbed, to ask him a short confidential question. To how many chances of detection did Gauden expose himself? How nearly impossible is it that the king, the duke, the chancellor, and Morley, should have abstained from the safest means of inquiry, and, in opposition to their former opinions and prejudices, yielded at once to Gauden's assertion, without any evidence of its truth?

Sir James Mackintosh then goes on to show, that the previous belief of the royalist party in the genuineness of the Eikon very much magnifies the improbability of such suppositions. "The truth," says he, "might be discovered from the parties appealed to, and conveyed to the audacious pretender without any scandal. There was no need of any public exposure. A private intimation of the falsehood of one material circumstance must have silenced Gauden. But what, on the contrary, is the answer of Lord Clarendon? The decisive words, at length extorted from him, 'When it ceases to be a secret, I know nobody will be glad of it but Mr Milton,' express such an unhesitating assent to the claim as could only have flowed from inquiry and evidence. By confessing that the secret had been imparted to him, he admits the other material part of Gauden's statement, that the information came through Morley. It may also be remarked, that Gauden, if his story was true, chose the persons to whom he imparted it both prudently and fairly. He dealt with it as a secret the disclosure of which would injure the royal cause; and he therefore confined his communications to the king's sons and the chancellor, who could not be indisposed to the cause by it, and whose knowledge of it was necessary to justify his own legitimate claims. Had it been false, no choice could have been more unfortunate. He appealed to those who, for ought he knew, might have in their possession the means of instantly demonstrating that he was guilty of a falsehood so impudent and perilous that nothing parallel to it has ever been hazarded by a man of sound mind. How could Gauden know that the king did not possess his father's manuscript, and that Royston the printer was not ready to prove that he received it from Charles I. through hands totally unconnected with Gauden?"

This reasoning seems to be quite decisive; but as the case is argued on every point in the masterly article to which we have already alluded; and as the objections which have from time to time been raised against Gauden's claim are there victoriously refuted, whilst the peculiar character of the book itself is shown to be such as to destroy all probability of its being the composition of Charles I.; we shall content ourselves with referring the reader to the Edinburgh Review, vol. xlv. p. 2, et seqq. taken in conjunction with Dr Wordsworth's book entitled Who wrote Icon Basilike, Cambridge, 1824.