"One of _us_," pithily comments Archbishop Herring.

"I write rather like a divine than a prince," the assumed author acknowledges, or is made to acknowledge.

When to these considerations is added that any scrap of the "Eikon" in the King's handwriting would have been treasured as an inestimable relic, and that no scrap was ever produced, there can be little question as to the verdict of criticism.

For all practical purposes, nevertheless, the "Eikon" in Milton's time was the King's book, for everybody thought it so.

Milton hints some vague suspicions, but refrains from impugning it seriously, and indeed the defenders of its authenticity will be quite justified in asserting that if Gauden had been dumb, Criticism would have been blind.
According to Selden's biographer, Cromwell was at first anxious that the "Eikon" should be answered by that consummate jurist, and it was only on his declining the task that it came into Milton's hands.