GAUDEN, JOHN (1605-1662), English bishop and writer, reputed author of the Eikon Basilike, was born at Mayland, Essex, where his father was vicar. Educated at Bury St. Edmunds and at St. John's college, Cambridge, he seems to have been at Oxford until 163o, when he became vicar of Chippenham. His sympa thies were at first with the parliamentary party. He was chaplain to Robert Rich, second earl of Warwick, and preached before the House of Commons in 164o. Apparently his views changed as the revolutionary tendency of the Presbyterian party became more pronounced, for in 1648/9 he addressed to Lord Fairfax A Re ligious and Royal Protestation . . . against the proceedings of the parliament. Under the Commonwealth he faced both ways. At the Restoration he was made bishop of Exeter. He complained to Hyde, earl of Clarendon, of the poverty of the see, and based claims for a better benefice on a certain secret service, which he explained on Jan. 20, 1661 to be the sole invention of the Eikon Basilike, The Pourtraicture of his Sacred Majestie in his Solitudes and Sufferings, put forth within a few hours after the execution of Charles I. as written by the king himself. To which Clarendon replied that he had been before acquainted with the secret and had often wished he had remained ignorant of it. Gauden was advanced in 1662, not as he had wished to the see of Winchester, but to Worcester. He died on May 23 of the same year.
See Private Correspondence between Chas. I. and Sir Ed. Nicholas pubd. as vol. v. of the Memoirs of John Evelyn (1827) ; C. Words worth, Who wrote Eikon Basilike? two letters addressed to the arch bishop of Canterbury (1824), and King Charles the First, the Author of Icon Basilike (1828) ; E. J. L. Scott's introduction to his reprint (i88o) of the original edition ; articles in the Academy, May and June 1883, by C. E. Doble; another reprint edit. by E. Almack for the King's Classics (i9o4) ; and E. Almack, Bibliography of the King's Book (1896) which summarizes etc. the arguments on either side and gives a full bibliography.