DR JOSEPH, son of John Gauden vicar of Mayfield in Essex, was born there in 1605. At the commencement of the civil war, he was chaplain to Robert earl of Warwick; who taking part with the parliament against the king, was followed by his chaplain. Upon the establishment of the Presbyterian model of church government, he complied with the ruling powers, and was nominated one of the assembly of divines who met at Westminster in 1643, and took the covenant; yet having offered some scruples and objections to it, his name was afterwards struck out of the list. Nor did he espouse the parliament cause any longer than they adhered to their first avowed principles of reforming only, instead of destroying, monarchy and episcopacy. In this spirit he was one of those divines who signed a protestation to the army against the violent proceedings that affected the life of the king; and a few days after his execution published the famous Exercitatio, A Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings; which ran through 50 editions in the course of a year. Upon the return of Charles II. he was promoted to the see of Exeter; and in 1662 was removed to Worcester, much to his regret. regret, having flattered himself with the hopes of a translation to Winchester; and his death happened the same year. He wrote many controversial pieces suited to the circumstances of the times, and to his own views from them. The Eikon Basilike above mentioned he published as the king's private meditations: though on this point there has been a long controversy. After the bishop's death, his widow, in a letter to one of her sons, calls it The Jewel; and said, her husband had hoped to make a fortune by it; and that she had a letter of a very great man's, which would clear up that he writ it. This assertion, as the earl of Clarendon had predicted, was eagerly espoused by the anti-royalists, in the view of disparaging Charles I. But it has been observed, that Gauden had too luxuriant an imagination, which betrayed him into a rankness of style in the Asiatic way; and from thence, as Bishop Barnet argues with others, it may be certainly concluded, that not he, but the king himself, was the true author of the Eikon Basilike; in which there is a nobleness and justness of thought, with a greatness of style, that made it be looked on as the best written book in the English language.

GAVEL or GABEL, among builders. See GABEL.