EIKON BASILIKE

(i’kon_ba-sil’iké; Gr., ‘the royal image’), the name of a book published shortly after the execution of Charles I in Jan., 1649, and supposed by some to have been written by the king himself. At the Restoration Gauden, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, laid claim to the authorship, and a memorandum in the copy of the Harl of Angle sea, Lord Privy Seal under Charles II, affirms his claim with the authority 89 EILDON HILLS of Charles II and the Duke of York. The Royalist Clarendon, author of the History of the Rebellion, accepted this statement, but others refused to ered it Gauden with the authorship. Witbin a year of its publication, 48,000 copies of the book were sold, and the republicans put forward Milton to answer it, his Hikonoklastes (that is ‘image-breaker’) appearing the same year, by order of Parliament. The ikon Basiliké profe es to be a sort of private journal of the king, written in an afiectedly dignified strain, and containing numerous a ertions of love for his misguided and ungrateful people.—Cf. Almack, Bibliography of the King’s Book, or Eikon Basilike.