upon the two grand disputations, that have subsisted between the
friends and enemies of Charles I. about the author of the Basilike,
and the Commission granted to the Irish Papists; as to the last, the
reader, if he pleases, may consult at the Life of Lord Broghill, in
which he will find the mystery of iniquity disclosed, and Charles
entirely freed from the least appearance of being concerned in
granting so execrable a commission; the forgery is there fully
related, and there is all the evidence the nature of the thing will
admit of, that the King's memory has been injured by so base an
imputation. As to the first, it is somewhat difficult to determine,
whether his Majesty was or was not the author of these pious
Meditations; Mr. Birch has summed up the evidence on both sides; we
shall not take upon us to determine on which it preponderates; it will
be proper here to observe, the chief evidence against the King in this
contention, is, Dr. Gauden, bishop of Exeter, who claimed that book as
his, and who, in his letters to the earl of Clarendon, values himself
upon it, and becomes troublesomely sollicitous for preferment on that
account; he likewise told the two princes that the Basilike was not
written by their father, but by him; now one thing is clear, that
Gauden was altogether without parts; his Life of Hooker, which is the
only genuine and indisputed work of his, shews him a man of no extent
of thinking; his stile is loose, and negligently florid, which is
diametrically opposite to that of these Meditations. Another
circumstance much invalidates his evidence, and diminishes his
reputation for honesty. After he had, for a considerable time,
professed himself a Protestant, and been in possession of an English
bishopric, and discovered an ardent desire of rising in the church,
notwithstanding this, he declared himself at his death a Papist; and
upon the evidence of such a man, none can determine a point in
disputation; for he who durst thus violate his conscience, by the
basest hypocrisy, will surely make no great scruple to traduce the
memory of his sovereign.

In a work of Milton's called Icon Oclastes, or the Image broken, he
takes occasion to charge the king with borrowing a prayer from Sir
Philip Sidney's Arcadia, and placing it in his Meditations without
acknowledging the favour. Soon after the sentence of the Regicides had
been put in execution these Meditations were published, and as Anthony
by shewing the bo