GAUDEN, gg'dcn, JouN (1605-62). An Eng lish prelate and author. He was born at May land, Essex, where his father was vicar. After education at Bury. Saint Edmund's, he entered Saint John's College, Cambridge, and obtained the degrees of B.A. and M.A. While a tutor at Oxford he took the degree of B.D. at Wadham College in 1(1:15, and D.D. in 1641. His pupil, Sir Francis Russell, presented him with the liv ing of Chippenham in 1640, and the same year he was the appointed preacher to the House of Commons. After the Restoration, in 1660, be was appointed Bishop of Exeter, and in 1662 was translated to the bishopric of Worcester. He died four months later (September 20, 1662). His publications number some thirteen or more books, which appeared between 1642 and 1660. At first he was inclined to the Parliamentary cause, but in the end he strongly opposed the Puritan excesses. Among his more forcible writings may be mentioned Cromwell's Bloody Slaughter House; or, His Damnable Designs in Contriving the Murther of His Sacred Majesty King Charles I. Discovered (1660). He is best, known on ac count of the controversies which have raged over the authorship of Eikon Basilike, a book at tributed to Charles I. himself. It was published immediately after the execution of the King, and, according to Malcolm Laing, "had it ap peared a week sooner, it might have saved the King's life." The Bishop claimed its author
ship in correspondence with Chancellor Hyde, Lord Clarendon (1660-62). Burnet in 1674 stated that the Duke of York told him that Dr. Gauden was the author, and in November, 1686, at the sale of the Marquis of Anglesey's choice library of books, the 'famous memorandum' was found in the peer's copy of the Eikon Basilike- "King Charles II. and the Duke of York have both assured me that this work was none of the King's compiling, but made by Dr. Gauden, Bishop of Chester(?), which I here insert for the undeceiving of others in this point, by attest ing so much, under my hand." A sharp contro versy arose, which has been revived on vari ous occasions up to as late as 1880. In Who Wrote Icon Basilikef (3 vols., 1824-28), Dr. Christopher Wordsworth 'proves' that the King did. Sir James Mackintosh, reviewing Words worth's book in the Edinburgh Review (xliv.), 'proves' that Gauden wrote it. Macaulay, Guizot, and other historians sustain Gauden's claim. Consult Almach, Bibliography of the King's Book (London, 1896). See EIKON BASILIKE.