JOHN, the reputed author of the "Icon Basilike," was born in 1605, at Mayfield in Essex, of which parish his father was vicar. He was educated at Bury St Edmunds, and afterwards at St John's College, Cambridge. Selecting the church as a profession, he obtained in 1630 the living of Chippenham, and various other valuable pre-ferments in rapid succession. His promotion, however, speedy as it was, did not keep pace with his desires; and when the civil war broke out, he found himself under the sad necessity of siding with one or other of the two parties. Though probably a royalist at heart, he had the tact to seem favourable to the parliamentarians, and was rewarded for some supposed services with the valuable living of Bocking in Essex. He here outwardly conformed with all the requirements of the law; but judiciously resolving to be provided against the chances of fortune, wrote secretly a "protestation" against the king's trial, and a "Just Invective against those who murdered King Charles L," besides other loyal effusions. None of these, however, appeared till two years after the Restoration. The most remarkable of them by far was the Icon Basilike, or Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings, which, in the course of one year, passed through fifty editions. The evidence on which Gauden's claims to the authorship of this work rest is very fully canvassed by Sir James Mackintosh, Edinburgh Review, vol. xlv., and by him pronounced satisfactory. For his service to the royal cause Gauden was made Bishop of Exeter, and afterwards of Worcester. He died in 1662; and it is said that his death was hastened by his poignant grief for losing the rich see of Winchester on which he had set his heart.