# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gauden, John

​GAUDEN, JOHN (1605–1662), bishop of Worcester, was born in 1605 at Mayland in Essex, of which parish his father was vicar. He was educated at Bury St. Edmunds school, and about 1618–19 entered St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took the degrees of B.A. about 1622–3, and M.A. in 1625–6. In 1630 he went to Oxford as tutor to two sons of Sir William Russell, bart., of Chippenham in Cambridgeshire, whose daughter Elizabeth, widow of Edward Lewknor, esq., of Denham in Suffolk, he had lately married. Upon their departure he seems to have remained at Oxford as tutor to other pupils of rank. He became a commoner of Wadham College in September 1630, took his B.D. on 22 July 1635, and proceeded D.D. on 8 July 1641. In March 1640 he became vicar of Chippenham, on the presentation of his pupil, now Sir Francis Russell. He was also chaplain to Robert Rich, earl of Warwick. Wood's statement that he was rector of Brightwell, Berkshire, is disproved by an examination of the registers. He shared Warwick's parliamentary sympathies, and was appointed to preach before the House of Commons on 29 Nov. 1640. His sermon (printed in 1641) brought him a large silver tankard, inscribed ‘Donum honorarium populi Anglicani in parliamento congregati, Johanni Gauden.’ In 1641 he was nominated by the parliament, through Warwick's influence, to the deanery of Bocking in Essex. He also procured a collation from Archbishop Laud, the legitimate patron, then in the Tower. Baker says he was admitted on 1 April 1642 as dean of Bocking in Essex, ‘atque rector ibidem, à Gulielmo Archiepiscopo Cantuar. non nolente, nec admodum volente, utpote non planè libero et in arce Londinensi concluso.’ Gauden was chosen one of the assembly of divines in 1643, according to his own account. From that assembly he says he was shuffled out by a secret committee and an unknown sleight of hand, because he was for regulating, not rooting out episcopacy (see his Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ Suspiria, p. 377, and his Anti Baal-Berith, p. 89). We are also assured that he took the ‘solemn league and covenant,’ though he seems to deny it, and published in 1643 ‘Certain Scruples and Doubts of Conscience about taking the Solemn League and Covenant.’ He ultimately gave up the use of the Common Prayer, though it was continued in his church longer than in any in the neighbourhood.
Gauden began to have misgivings as the struggle developed. He published in 1648–9 a ‘Religious and Loyal Protestation of John Gauden, D.D., against the present Purposes and Proceedings of the Army and others about the trying and destroying our Sovereign Lord the King; sent to a Colonell to bee presented to the Lord Fairfax.’ Shortly after the king's death, if we may believe his own statement, he wrote ‘Cromwell's Bloody Slaughter House; or his damnable Designs in contriving the Murther of his Sacred Majesty King Charles I discovered.’ This, however, was not printed till 1660. In 1662 it was reprinted with additions as ‘Στρατοστηλιτευτικόν. A Just Invective against those of the Army and their Abettors, who murdered King Charles I on the 30th Jan. 1648. Written February 1648 by Dr. Gauden.’ While retaining his preferments, he published in 1653 ‘Hieraspistes: a Defence by way of Apology for the Ministry and Ministers of the Church of England;’ and again in the same year, ‘The Case of Ministers' Maintenance by Tithes (as in England) plainly discussed in Conscience and Prudence.’ On the passing of the Civil Marriage Act he published ‘Ἱεροτελεστία γαμική. Christ at the Wedding: the pristine sanctity and solemnity of Christian Marriages as they were celebrated by the Church of England,’ London, 4to, 1654. In 1658 he published ‘Funerals made Cordials;’ a funeral sermon upon Robert Rich, heir-apparent to the earldom of Warwick. In 1659 he printed ‘A petitionary Remonstrance presented to O. P. 4 Feb. 1655 by John Gauden, D.D., &c., in behalf of many thousands his distressed brethren, ministers of the Gospel, and other good scholars, deprived of all publique employment by his Declaration, 1 Jan.’ Gauden had thus maintained an ambiguous position, retaining his preferments, and conforming to presbyterianism, though publishing books on behalf of the church of England. In 1656 he was endeavouring to promote an agreement between presbyterians and episcopalians on the basis of Archbishop Ussher's model (Thurloe, v. ​598). In 1659 he published a folio entitled ‘Ἱερὰ Δάκρυα. Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ Suspiria, or the Tears, Sighs, Complaints, and Prayers of the Church of England.’ Gauden preached the funeral sermon of Bishop Ralph Brownrig [q. v.], who died on 7 Dec. 1659, and published it with amplifications as a memorial. Gauden succeeded Brownrig in the preachership at the Temple. Upon the restoration of Charles II he was made chaplain to the king, and in November 1660 appointed to the bishopric of Exeter vacant by Brownrig's death. The revenues of the see were, according to Gauden, only about 500l. a year, but from the long intermission in renewing the leases of estates, the fines for renewal upon Gauden's appointment are said to have amounted to 20,000l. Before his promotion to Exeter he had published his ‘Anti-sacrilegus; or a Defensative against the plausible pest or guilded poyson of that namelesse paper (supposed to be the plot of Dr. C. Burges and his partners) which tempts the King's Majestie by the offer of five hundred thousand pounds to make good to the purchasers of bishops' lands, &c., their illegal bargain for ninety-nine years,’ 4to, 1660. Also ‘Ἀνάλυσις. The loosing of St. Peter's bands; setting forth the true sense and solution of the Covenant in point of Conscience, so far as it relates to Episcopacy,’ 4to, 1660. And again, ‘Anti Baal-Berith, or the Binding of the Covenant and the Covenanters to their good behaviour by a Vindication of Dr. Gauden's Analysis,’ 4to, 1661. In 1661 he published ‘A pillar of gratitude humbly dedicated to the glory of God, the honour of his Majesty, the renown of this present Parliament, upon their restoring the Church of England to the primitive government of Episcopacy.’ In 1662 he published a very faulty edition of Hooker's works, and prefixed a life of the author, which is unfavourably criticised by Isaac Walton. He now petitioned for advancement to the see of Winchester. On 25 July 1663 Pepys visited Dennis Gauden, the bishop's brother, who had nearly finished a fine house at Clapham. The house, as Dennis told Pepys, had been built for his brother ‘when he should come to be bishop of Winchester, which he was promised,’ as there was no house belonging to the see. Winchester, however, was given to Morley, bishop of Worcester, and Gauden was forced to be content with a translation to Worcester, to which he was elected on 23 May 1662, and confirmed on 10 June. It is said that vexation at having missed the aim of his ambition brought on a violent attack of the stone and strangury, of which he died on 20 Sept. following. He was buried in Worcester Cathedral, where there is a monument with his bust. His widow petitioned the king for the half-year's profits of Worcester, on the plea of the expenses of removal, but her petition was rejected on account of the large fines received at Exeter. Till his elevation Gauden presumably lived at Bocking to which parish he gave 400l. for the schools.
Besides other writings of an ephemeral character, the ‘Εἰκὼν Βασιλική; the Pourtraicture of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings,’ has been on very strong grounds attributed to Gauden. A copy of this book is said to have been bought the day after the king's execution (Toland, Life, 1722, p. 16), i.e. 31 Jan. 1649. It certainly appeared almost simultaneously with that event, and was put forth as the genuine work of Charles I. It soon went through forty-seven editions, was translated into Latin by John Earle (1601?–1665) [q. v.] in 1649, and was attacked in Milton's ‘Iconoclastes’ (1649). Some doubts as to whether the king was author are insinuated by Milton. They are noticed in the ‘Princely Pelican,’ a royalist pamphlet published six months later, and stated more explicitly in the Εἰκὼν ἀληθινή (probably August 1649), to which a reply was made in the Εἰκὼν ἡ πιστή. A sharp controversy upon the question broke out after the revolution of 1688.
Gauden, when appointed to Exeter, complained to Clarendon of the poverty of the see, and asked for a higher reward on the ground of some secret service. In a letter received 21 Jan. 1660–1 he explained that this was the sole ‘invention’ of the ‘Eicon.’ Clarendon said in his reply: ‘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 glad of it except Mr. Milton. I have very often wished I had never been trusted with it’ (Clarendon State Papers, iii. supplement, pp. xxvi, xxxii). When a vacancy was expected at Winchester, Gauden again pressed his claims upon Clarendon, upon the Duke of York, and Charles II, and afterwards upon Clarendon's enemy, George Digby, second earl of Bristol [q. v.] The claim was obviously admitted at the time by the persons concerned, although Clarendon in a conversation with his son in the last year of his life (1674) used language apparently denying Gauden's authorship (Wagstaffe, Vindication and Defence of Vindication). Burnet states that in 1674 the Duke of York told him that Gauden was the author. A memorandum written by Arthur Annesley, first earl of Anglesey [q. v.], in his copy of the book, to the effect that Charles II and the Duke ​of York made the same statement to him in 1675, came to light on the sale of Anglesey's library in 1686. Mrs. Gauden had made Gauden's authorship the ground of an application for the remission of claims upon his estate. A document written by her shortly before his death was found among papers referring to the ‘Eicon’ after her death in 1671. A list of these papers was given in ‘Truth brought to Light’ (1693), with an abstract of her narrative, which was fully printed in Toland's ‘Amyntor’ (1699). Anthony Walker, who had been Gauden's curate at Bocking, published in 1692 a ‘True Account of the Author of a Book entituled,’ &c. He professed to have been Gauden's confidant during the publication, and to have helped to send the book to press. The accounts of Gauden, his wife, and his curate are in some respects contradictory; but they agree in asserting that Gauden sent the book for approval to Charles I, through the Marquis of Hertford, during his imprisonment at Carisbrook, and that he afterwards published it from a copy which he had retained. A doubtful story that Mrs. Gauden expressed repentance (Hollingworth, Character of Charles I) is balanced by another that she swore upon the sacrament to its truth (Ludlow no Liar).
Royalist writers, on the other hand, state that Charles began the book at Theobalds in March 1641 (Princely Pelican). It was also said that the manuscript was lost at Naseby, and restored by a Major Huntington, of Cromwell's regiment. This story, mentioned by contemporary writers, was repeated by Huntington himself to Dugdale in 1679. Dugdale repeats the story with some variation in his ‘Short View of the late Troubles’ (1681). Huntington, however, says that the book was in the handwriting of Sir Edward Walker, with interlineations by Charles I. Now Walker wrote certain ‘Memorials’ which he gave to Charles I, which were lost at Naseby, recovered by means of an officer in the army, restored to the king, and afterwards published (Walker, Historical Discourses, 1705, p. 228). It is therefore obvious that this, and not the ‘Eicon,’ was the book recovered by Huntington.
Much further evidence was produced in the later controversy. Dr. Hollingworth's ‘Defence of Charles I,’ ‘Character of Charles I,’ and ‘Vindiciæ Carolinæ’ in 1692, Thomas Long's examination of Anthony Walker's account in 1693, Thomas Wagstaffe's ‘Vindication of King Charles the Martyr,’ 1697 (3rd edit. 1711), and J. Young's ‘Several Evidences concerning the Author,’ &c., 1703, are the chief royalist pamphlets, the earliest of which were answered in Toland's ‘Amyntor,’ 1699, and by an author who, under the name of General Ludlow, wrote ‘Ludlow no Lyar’ in a ‘Letter to Dr. Hollingworth,’ Amsterdam, 1692. According to the royalists, Dr. William Dillingham [q. v.] is said on the authority of his son to have read part of the manuscript when Charles was at Holmby House, and afterwards recognised the passages in the ‘Eicon;’ Sir John Brattle stated in 1691 that he was employed with his father to arrange the papers at Hampton Court before Charles's flight; Colonel Hammond is reported to have said that he found manuscript sheets of the ‘Eicon’ in Charles's chamber at Carisbrook; Levet, a page, deposed in 1690 that he saw papers in Charles's handwriting during the Newport treaty, and was convinced of the identity; and Sir Thomas Herbert, writing in 1679, states that he found a copy among the king's papers in his own handwriting. Besides some similar evidence, one of the printers employed by Royston (printer of the book) stated that the manuscript, in the handwriting of Oudart, secretary to Sir Edward Nicholas, was brought by Symmons, rector of Raine, near Bocking, and understood to be sent from the king. Mrs. Gauden says that her husband sent the manuscript through Symmons, who was arrested on account of his share in the business, and died in prison. It is suggested that Gauden was allowed by Symmons to copy the book on its way to the press, and upon the Restoration determined to claim it for himself. An old servant of Gauden (Wagstaffe, p. 64) said that he had sat up with his master, who had to copy a manuscript and return it to Symmons in haste. The chief question of external evidence is whether more weight should be given to the statements of the persons who profess to have seen the manuscript in Charles's hands, especially before Gauden could have sent it (which evidence is mainly hearsay evidence, and was first produced forty years after the events referred to), or to the admission of Gauden's claim by the authorities at the Restoration. The internal evidence, from the resemblance of the ‘Eicon’ to Gauden's writings, and from the information apparently in possession of the author, has been much discussed, and most fully and recently by Mr. C. E. Doble in the ‘Academy’ for May and June 1883. He gives very strong reasons for accepting Gauden's claim.
R. H-r.