author
John Gauden
1605–1662
A Church of England bishop and lively 17th-century polemicist, he is best remembered for his long association with the royalist classic Eikon Basilike. His career moved from parish life into high office at Exeter and Worcester during the turbulent years after the English Civil War.
1 Audiobook
Eikon Basilike The Pourtracture of His Sacred Majestie, in His Solitudes and Sufferings
by King of England Charles I, John Gauden
About the author
Born in Essex in 1605, John Gauden was educated at Bury St Edmunds and St John's College, Cambridge. He became an English cleric, writer, and controversialist whose life unfolded against the political and religious upheavals of the mid-17th century.
Gauden held a series of church positions before the Restoration brought him higher preferment. He was appointed Bishop of Exeter in 1660 and then transferred to Worcester in 1662. He died later that same year.
He is chiefly remembered because he claimed authorship of Eikon Basilike, the hugely influential royalist book published just after the execution of Charles I. The question of who really wrote it has remained disputed, which gives Gauden an unusual place in literary and political history as both a churchman and a figure tied to one of the era's most famous texts.