This feeling found expression in a book entitled "_Eikon Basilike_,
the portraiture of his sacred majesty in his solitude and sufferings."
The book was, it should seem, composed by Dr. Gauden, but professed
to be an authentic copy of papers written by the King. It is possible
that Gauden may have had in his hands some written scraps of the
King's meditations. If he had such, he only used them as hints to work
upon. Gauden was a churchman whom his friends might call liberal,
and his enemies time-serving. He was a churchman of the stamp of
Archbishop Williams, and preferred bishops and the Common-prayer to
presbyters and extempore sermons, but did not think the difference
between the two of the essence of religion. In better times Gauden
would have passed for broad, though his latitudinarianism was more the
result of love of ease than of philosophy. Though a royalist he sat in
the Westminster Assembly, and took the covenant, for which compliance
he nearly lost the reward which, after the Restoration, became his
due. Like the university-bred men of his day, Gauden was not a man of
ideas, but of style. In the present instance the idea was supplied
by events.
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