Definition of "gowned"

Deliberately, almost ‘augustly,’ the gowned and mortar-boarded figures followed one another through the great red turnstile and filed into the chamber beyond.

1950, Mervyn Peake, chapter 18, in Gormenghast, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode

The economic and political dependence of this African neo-colonial bourgeoisie is reflected in its culture of apemanship and parrotry conforced on a restive population through police boots, barbed wire, a gowned clergy and judiciary […].

1986, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind, Heinemann, published 2005, page 2

Pirates, buccaneers, the gowned ladies of the ancient pastoral – all the traditional subjects of imperial history – are among the images that take shape.

2001, Patricia Ismond, “Society and Nationhood in the Caribbean: Towards Another Life”, in Abandoning Dead Metaphors: The Caribbean Phase of Derek Walcott’s Poetry, University of the West Indies Press, page 258