John Gauden - Life

Life

He was born at Mayland, Essex, where his father was vicar of the parish, and educated at Bury St Edmunds school and at St John's College, Cambridge, where he took his M.A. degree in 1626. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Russell of Chippenham, Cambridgeshire, and was tutor at Oxford to two of his wife's brothers. He seems to have remained at Oxford until 1630, when he became vicar of Chippenham. His sympathies were at first with the parliamentary party. He was chaplain to Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, and preached before the House of Commons in 1640.

In 1641 he was appointed to the rural deanery of Bocking. Apparently his views changed as the revolutionary tendency of the Presbyterian party became more pronounced, for in 1649 he addressed to Lord Fairfax A Religious and Loyal Protestation... against the proceedings of the parliament. Under the Commonwealth he faced both ways, keeping his ecclesiastical preferment, but publishing from time to time pamphlets on behalf of the Church of England. Whilst in Bocking he met William Juniper, the "Gosfield Seer" whom he first dismissed as a harmless fool. However, he was later impressed by prophecies made by Juniper, first that the King would be overthrown, and then that the monarchy would be restored.

At the Restoration he was made bishop of Exeter. He immediately began to complain to Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, of the poverty of the see, and based claims for a better benefice on a certain secret service, which he explained in January 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 the same year.