John Gauden (died 20 September 1662) was an English cleric. He was Bishop of Exeter then Bishop of Worcester. He was also a writer, and the reputed author of the important Royalist work Eikon Basilike. Life He was born at Mayland, Essex, where his father, also named John Gauden, was vicar of the parish, and educated at Bury St Edmunds school and at St John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1623, M.A. 1626. By his matriculation at Michaelmas 1619, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives him a birth year 1599/1600; whereas A Cambridge Alumni Database gives 1605. He then moved to Oxford, where he graduated B.D. 1635 (at Wadham College, Oxford), D.D. 1641. He married Elizabeth, daughter of William Russell of Chippenham, Cambridgeshire, Treasurer of the Navy and his second wife Elizabeth Gerard, and widow of Edward Lewkenor of Denham in Suffolk, and was tutor at Oxford to two of his wife's brothers. They had five children, four sons and a daughter. 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 was elected to the See on 3 November 1660, confirmed 17 November, and consecrated a bishop on 2 December 1660. 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