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translating into French the book written by Mr. Milton in answer to that of the late King, entitled "His Meditations."'1

Milton followed the new lead, and in two pamphlets-(1) Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, (2) A Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Commonwealth—published at this time, refers to the Icon Basilikè as the King's work, and quotes a passage from it in italics as the last charge of Charles to his The leading members of the Council were Cromwell, Bradshaw, Whitelocke, Vane, Harrington, Mildmay, and they came to the conclusion that it was the King's work, and have themselves placed this on record, after the failure of their efforts either to convict the volume of forgery or to arrest its sale.

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Such, then, was the result of the first controversy respecting the Icon Basilikè. We have the deliberate opinion of the King's enemies that the book was written by the 'late King,' and that opinion is expressed on several occasions within a few months of the first publication of the work. Their endeavour to deprive the King of the credit of the composition had only served to bring to light convincing proofs in favour of the royal authorship, and had thus strengthened, instead of weakening, the hold which the book had already obtained over the popular mind. They found themselves compelled to change their tactics; and, taking refuge in the exact opposite of their former position, they now brought their charge against the King because he had written a book which showed his theatrical piety and high dissimulation, a "Black Book," writ on purpose to abuse the people into credulity and favour of his actions, and to poison them after his death.'

The controversy was not revived during the remainder of Cromwell's Protectorate. He died in 1659. The first year of the Restoration is marked by the issue of the royal letters patent of King Charles II. granting to Richard Royston the sole privilege of printing the works of King Charles I., 'as a reward for his fidelity in publishing many messages and papers of our said blessed father, especially those most excellent discourses and soliloquies by the name of Icon Basilike,' &c. &c. Nov. 29, 1660.

Yet, although not generally known till some time afterwards, at the very period of the issue of these letters patent by Charles II. his father's claim to the authorship of the book was again being called in question-not openly, but secretly, not by the late King's enemies, but by his pretended friend.

1 Tracts on the 'Icon Basilikè,' pp. 199, 200.

The nature of this attack is at once so audacious and so subtle that more than one historian has yielded to its force and has in turn made use of the same weapon to weaken, if not altogether to destroy, the confidence of posterity in the royal autobiography. But Dr. Wordsworth was not so easily overcome. He grappled with the difficulty in an exhaustive collection of tracts on the subject; he stated with candour every circumstance which may be urged in favour of the rival claim, compared the evidence, and drew his own conclusion. We will not trespass on the patience of the reader by following the indefatigable writer through the maze of contemporary controversy, but will endeavour to give a brief summary of those points upon which the real issue of the question may be said to depend.

The restoration of the episcopate, the best means of supplying the gaps which had occurred since the abolition of the order by the Parliament of 1646, was the first and anxious care of Sir Edward Hyde, even before the return of Charles II. to England. Among the divines selected to fill the vacant sees was Dr. Gauden, Dean and Rector of Bocking, consecrated Bishop of Exeter on December 2, 1660, enthroned in his cathedral on the 11th of that month. Dissatisfied with the poverty of his see, ten days have scarcely elapsed since his enthronement when the Bishop makes a series of complaints to his patron, and first in vague hints, afterwards in distinct language, presses upon the notice of the Lord Chancellor his special claim to a richer and better preferment. That special claim he avers to be the authorship of the Icon Basilikè. The documents in which the evidence of this startling statement is to be found are derived from three sources. They consist of Gauden's letters to the Lord Chancellor in the Clarendon Papers at Oxford,1 of the letters of the same person and his widow to the Earl of Bristol, from the Gibson Papers (formerly Archbishop Tennison's) in the archiepiscopal library at Lambeth, and lastly of the letters and other papers of Gauden, Mrs. Gauden, the Lord Chancellor, Sir Edward Nicholas, &c., now the property of Mr. Cornthwaite. First, with regard to Gauden's own letters, Dr. Wordsworth, in one of the careful notes with which his book is enriched, gives us the exact description of them.

'Of these letters the Rev. Dr. Bandinel, in a letter dated "Bodleian Library, May 9, 1825," informs me, "I have them all (six in num

1 Vol. iii., Appendix, pp. xxvi.-vii.

2Documentary Supplement to Tracts on the Icon Basilikè, pp. 3, 4

ber) now before me. They are all originals. All are directed to the Lord High Chancellor. All have been sealed—the five first with wax-and the impression a private, not the episcopal seal. All were undoubtedly received by Clarendon, as the first five are endorsed by himself. The last, sealed with a wafer, is endorsed by Lord Cornbury. The endorsements on the respective letters are :— (1) Bpp. of Exitter, Dec. 21; (2) ibid., Dec. 26; (3) ibid., Jan. 21; ibid., Feb. 25 (it should be Jan.); (5) ibid., Feb. 20 (these five by Lord Clarendon); (6) ibid., Mar. 6, 1660 (by Lord Cornbury). On the back of the first letter some person who was concerned in editing the State Papers (for I trace the handwriting, and I think it to be Scrope) has written, 'This bishop was the author of Eikon Basilikè,' after which some other person has written in stronger characters, 'NO.' After the dates of the endorsements on the first five there is written by a later hand, certainly not Lord Clarendon's, '1660.' The last is full-dated by Lord Cornbury."

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Letter I., Dec. 21, 1660, complains bitterly of the disadvantages of his new preferment, the poverty of the see, its distance from his friends; he 'refuses to beare with patience such a ruine after the service he has done the Royal Family, and his wife is too conscious of this service to bear with any temper the streights to which she sees herself and her children exposed.'

Letter II., Dec. 26, 1660, renews these laments, describes how yesterday he spent the saddest Christmas Day that ever I did keep in my life; that am come to an high rack and empty manger,' again hints at the signal service he has done the Royal Family, and is signed, 'The sad Bishop of Exeter.'

Letter III. is a reply to one from the Lord Chancellor, in which the Lord Chancellor protests his ignorance of any extraordinary or secret service. Gauden in this letter drops all hints and states plainly in what his great 'arcanum,' as he calls it, consists.

'Nor doe I doubt but I shall, by your Lordship's favour, find the fruits as to something extraordinary, since the service was soe ; not as to what was known to the world under my name, in order to vindicate the Crown and Church, but what goes under the late blessed King's name, the Eikov or portraiture of hys Majesty in his solitude and sufferings. This booke and figure was wholly and only my invention, making, and designe, in order to vindicate the King's wisdome, honor, and piety. My wife, indeed, was conscious to it, and had a hand in disguising the letters of that copy which I sent to the King in the Isle of Wight, by favour of the late Marquise of Hartford, which was delivered to the King by the now Bishop of Win

1 Documentary Supplement to Tracts on the Icon Basilikè, p. 8.

chester. Hys Majesty graciously accepted, owned, and adopted it as his sense and genius, not only with great approbation, but admiration; hee kept it by him; and though his cruel murtherers went on to perfect hys martyrdome, yet God preserved and prospered this book, to revive hys honour and redeeme hys Majesty's name from that grave of contempt, abhorrence, and infamy in which they aymed to bury him, &c. &c. . . . I did lately present my fayth in it [the book] to the Duke of York, and by him to the King. Both of them were

pleased to give me credit and owne it as a rare service in those horrors of times. True I played this best card in my hand something too late, else I might have sped as well as Dr. Reynolds and some others; but I did not lay it as a ground of ambition, nor use it as a ladder. Thinking myself secure in the just value of Dr. Morley, who I was sure knew it, and told mee your Lordship did so too,' &c.

We must note, in passing, that in this letter Gauden says he has already acquainted the King and the Duke of York with his secret, and here, by a comparison of dates, we find that this communication was made to the King between Nov. 3 and 7, 1660. This matter about the date has an important bearing on the question of the credence given by the King to Gauden's claim, for before the month was out--i.e. on the 29th-royal letters patent were granted to Richard Royston for the sole printing of the late King's works, and particularly the Icon Basilikè.

Letters IV. (Jan. 25), V. (Feb. 20), VI. (Mar. 6), follow the letter which contained the vital secret, without any answer being vouchsafed to the importunate Bishop, who renews in each of them his complaints and lamentations over the poverty of his see. At length, on March 13, two months having elapsed, the Lord Chancellor breaks silence. He begins by assuring his correspondent that all his letters make a deep impression upon him, and ends with these lines:--

'The particular which you often renewed I doe confesse was imparted to me under secresy, 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 but Mr. Milton. I have very often wished that I had never been trusted with it. My Lord, I have nothing to inlarge, all I have to say being fitter for a conference than a letter, and I hope shortly to see you."

At the latter end of the month Gauden comes to London. There is no evidence to show whether or not he had the promised conference with Clarendon; but in the following December he resumes his correspondence. The Bishop of Winchester is ill, and Gauden, with an eye to succeeding

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him, again urges his claim; but there is no answer to this letter from the Lord Chancellor. Then we have letters of the same kind to the Duke of York (Jan. 17, 1662) and to the King;-letters containing a distinct falsehood, for he says to the King, 'I doe not need, soe I cannot well have any other intercessor than your own royal favour, and his Highness the Duke of York, to whose breast only have I communicated so important a secret'-whereas Letter III. shows that he had also confided it to Lord Clarendon. There is no answer to this letter extant among the papers.

Next in order come Gauden's letters to the Earl of Bristol. They are seven in number, bearing dates March 20, 26, 27, 31, May 1, July 9, July 9, 1662. They are characterised by a marked servility, coupled with innuendoes against his former patron, then on the verge of his disgrace at Court, and of whom Lord Bristol was known to be the bitter antagonist. Gauden accidentally discovers that his new correspondent is acquainted with his 'arcanum,' and from that moment, in the hope of obtaining the see of Winchester, he ceases not to beset him with the same importunities with which he had pestered Lord Clarendon. More especially when the Bishop of Winchester (Dr. Duppa) leaves all humane affairs' then Gauden's letters pour in; but although he does not obtain the see he desires, he is still his Lordship's 'humble, thankful servant.' On May 23 Gauden is appointed to Worcester, vacated by Morley's promotion to Winchester. In the last three letters, May I and two of July 9 (1662), there is only one allusion to the arcanum.' On September 20 Gauden died, aged 57, having only occupied his new see four months.

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This is Gauden's own story, and at first sight it is startling enough. The next piece of direct evidence is that of Gauden's wife. Shortly after the death of her husband she addresses a letter to Lord Bristol, explaining how her husband, when he was dying, tried to write to him, but was unable to do so. She then enters upon the same subject, 'the secret of which his Lordship was aware; her confidence in his compassion, that he will exert himself to assist her,' &c., in obtaining for her the remission of certain claims in respect of her late husband's tenure of the See of Worcester. No answer is to be found to this letter, and we know that the boon sought was not granted. In 1671 Mrs. Gauden also died. She has left behind her a narrative in two parts, which we have before us. It is comprised in a paper written shortly after the death of her husband in 1662. It was not publicly known till 1693, when an abstract was given of it in

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