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king's scale. When the parliamentary party was quite in the ascendant, he had the courage to urge the university in a sermon at St. Mary's to 'publish a formal protestation against the rebellious League;' and, on going to Tunbridge to visit his mother, he preached two sermons stirring up the people to contribute to the pecuniary relief of the king's forces there. He was imprisoned for a short time, and then deprived of his fellowship because he refused to take the 'engagement.' Having fired a parting shot in the shape of a 'Treatise against the Covenant,' he retired to Oxford. On 10 July 1644 he was incorporated M.A. He was then appointed chaplain of New College by Dr. Pink, the warden, and for two years he acted as curate to Dr. Jasper Mayne at Cassington, a village near Oxford. The court was then at Oxford, and Gunning on more than one occasion preached before it; and on 23 June 1646, the very day before the surrender of Oxford to the parliamentary forces, a complimentary degree of B.D. was conferred upon him and several other Cambridge men. Throughout 'the troubles' Gunning never wavered either in his principles or in his conduct. He acted as tutor to Lord Hatton's son and to Sir Francis Compton, and was appointed chaplain to Sir Robert Shirley. Though sometimes accused of 'leaning towards popery,' Gunning was always a thorough English churchman, as much opposed to Romanism on the one side as to puritanism on the other. He held a disputation with a Roman priest, and acquitted himself so well that Sir Robert Shirley settled on him an annuity of 100l. On the death of Shirley, Gunning undertook the services at the chapel of Exeter House in the Strand, and, in spite of some remonstrances from Oliver Cromwell, conducted them strictly in accordance with the rites of the church of England. Cromwell, however, connived at the practice, and the Exeter House chapel became a frequent resort for churchmen. On one occasion—possibly on more—he met with serious molestation. John Evelyn records that on Christmas day 1657 he went to 'Exeter Chapel, where Gunning was preaching. Sermon ended, as he was giving us the holy sacrament, the chapel was surrounded with soldiers, and all the communicants and assembly surprised and kept prisoners by them, some in the house, others carried away.'

After the Restoration Gunning's rise was rapid. In 1660 he was created D.D. by royal mandate, presented to a prebend in Canterbury Cathedral, instituted to the rectories of Cottesmore in Rutlandshire and Stoke Bruerne in Northamptonshire, elected master of Clare Hall, and made the Lady Margaret professor of divinity at Cambridge. In 1661 he exchanged the headship of Clare for the more important one of St. John's College, Cambridge, and the Lady Margaret professorship for the regius professorship of divinity. He was chosen proctor for the chapter of Canterbury and for the clergy of the diocese of Peterborough in the Lower House of Convocation, and also one of the committee for the review of the liturgy and other points at the Savoy conference. In 1669 he was promoted to the bishopric of Chichester, and in 1674-5 was translated to that of Ely, where he died on 6 July 1684, and was buried in Ely Cathedral. He never married.

Gunning, being a man of very decided convictions, has been the object of both praise and censure. He took a prominent part in the Savoy conference. Gunning, Pearson, and Sparrow represented the episcopal side in the 'personal conference' which was granted at the request of the presbyterians, who were represented in it by Bates, Jacomb, and Baxter. Gunning was specially pitted against Baxter, who gives the only contemporary account of the conference. Baxter speaks of Gunning's 'passionate addresses,' of his 'insulting answer,' and so forth; and was probably all the more incensed against him because the chairman, Dr. Sanderson, pronounced that 'Dr. Gunning had the better of the argument.' Baxter, however, also says: 'Gunning was their forwardest and greatest speaker, understanding well what belonged to a disputant; a man of greater study and industry than any of them; well-read in Fathers and Councils, (and, I hear and believe, of a very temperate life as to all carnal excesses whatsoever); but so vehement for his high, imposing principles, and so over-zealous for Arminianism, and formality and church pomp, and so very eager and fervent in his discourse, that I conceive his prejudice and passion much perverted his judgment, and I am sure they made him lamentably over-run himself in his discourses' (Reliquiæ Baxterianæ).

Burnet writes contemptuously of the whole affair: 'Baxter and Gunning spent several days in logical arguing to the diversion of the town, who looked upon them as a couple of fencers engaged in a dispute that could not be brought to an end,' and says of Gunning in particular that 'all the arts of sophistry were used by him in as confident a manner as if they had been sound reasoning; that he was unweariedly active to very little purpose, and, being fond of popish rituals and ceremonies, he was very much set upon reconciling the church of England to Rome.' Gunning's anti-Roman views are too clearly 