[2] Disturbed by the theological views of Eleazar Duncon's 1633 DD commencement, which recommended bowing at the altar and suggested that "good works are efficaciously necessary to salvation",[1] Gatford wrote a long letter on the subject to Lord Goring.
[4] Soon after the outbreak of the English Civil War, Gatford retired to Cambridge in order to write a pamphlet setting forth the doctrine of the church in regard to the obedience due to kings.
On the night of 26 January 1642–3 Oliver Cromwell seized his manuscript, then in the press at Cambridge, arrested Gatford in his bed at Jesus College, and sent both author and copy to London.
[10] His next publication was A Faithfull and Faire Warning, reissued as Englands Complaint (1648): Gatford called upon "Inhabitants of the county of Suffolk" to help the royalist garrison at Colchester holding out against the New Model Army,[11] and expressed fears that parliament would grant toleration to Catholics, who would consequently return to power.
Pursued by the county committees for persisting in keeping up the traditional Church of England service, he protested in A Petition for the Vindication of the Publique use of the Book of Common Prayer (1655), prefixed by a spirited letter to the parliament.
He found the chancel and parsonage-house of Dennington in ruins, and, as he could not afford to have them rebuilt, petitioned the king for the vicarage of St Andrew's Church, Plymouth in Devon, to which he was presented on 20 August 1661.
[12] Gatford's last literary labour was to defend his old patron, Sir John Rous, from puritan allegations of drunkenness in A true and faithfull Narrative of the … death of Mr. William Tyrrell (1661).
Gatford, on the recommendation of Edward Hyde, now Earl of Clarendon and high steward of the borough, was accepted by the corporation, and allowed "to officiate as curate during the pleasure of the House.