Southill. He had been trained to the bar, and a few weeks before Bunyan's trial he had acted as junior counsel for the Crown in the trial of the Regicides; and he conducted the trial of Captain Hacker, who was commander of the guard at the execution of Charles I. The year after Bunyan's trial he was knighted, and became M.P. for Bedford. Two years later he took a leading part in the prosecution of Sir Harry Vane. His party zeal commended him to the ruling party, and he rose very rapidly in his profession; and, to the great indignation of all rightthinking persons, he was made Lord Chief Justice over the head of Sir Matthew Hale. As judge he surpassed public expectation by his violent outbursts of brutality, and the fanatical and ludicrous behaviour with which he disgraced the judgement-seat. It was said of him that he was 'far fitter to charge the Roundheads under Prince Rupert than a jury in Westminster Hall.' Like most blusterers, Keeling was a coward, and having provoked the censure of Parliament by the gross indecency with which he showed his contempt of Magna Charta, he only escaped punishment by an act of most obsequious submission. He died before Bunyan's release. (Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices.) The other judges, according to Dr. Brown, were Sir Harry Chester, of Beckrings Park, Lidlington; Sir George Blundell, of Cardington; Sir William Beecher, of Howbury Hall, Renhold; and Thomas Snagg, Esq., of Millbrook, afterwards High Sheriff.

P. 414, 1. 20. pedler's French. A common term for the argot, or cant language used by thieves and other vagabonds in their intercourse with one another.

''Twere fitter

Such honest lads as myself had it, that instead

Of pedlar's French gives him plain language for his money,

Stand and deliver.'

Beaumont and Fletcher, Faithful Friend, i. 2.

P. 417, 1. 21. the late insurrection at London. This was the outbreak of Venner, a wine-cooper, the 'Fifth Monarchy man,' and his little band of fanatical associates, in the streets of London, January, 1661. The whole band did not muster more than forty, but they scoured the city and caused great alarm. 'Some of them,' writes Burnet,' were persuaded that Christ would come down and head them.' They fought desperately, refused all quarter, and killed several soldiers; but at length Venner, after he had received three shots, was taken with nine more, and twenty were killed. Venner and sixteen others were executed January 19-21.

1. 26. Bunyan was a tue loyalist, and his strong attachment to his sovereign, as such, is shown in many places in his works. Many such

K k

passages are collected by the Rev. J. Copner, in his Hero of Elstow, PP. 36-38.

P. 423, 1. 21. the King was crowned. The coronation of Charles II took place in Westminster Abbey, April 23, 1661.

1. 34. Judge Hales. This was the eminently excellent Sir Matthew Hale. The utmost kindness the law would allow might be expected from one who was the friend of Richard Baxter, who looked with disfavour on the rigour of the Act of Uniformity, and who, while he preferred the Episcopalian form of Church government to any other, was unable to accept any as of absolute divine authority, and was therefore indisposed to prosecute those who dissented from the national form of religion.

P. 424, l. 18. the Swan Chamber. The principal room in the Swan Inn. This chief house of public entertainment in the town of Bedford stood on the bank of the river Ouse, close to the bridge foot at the north-east corner. The old inn, long since pulled down, was a long, low, picturesque, half-timbered building, with projecting bow windows lighting the chief apartment overlooking the river, in which the judges and magistrates met.

P. 426, 1. 15. I am but mother-in-law to them. But for this passage we should have been left in ignorance of the death of Bunyan's first wife, and of his second marriage to this truly heroic woman, so well worthy of such a husband.

1. 19. I being smayed at the news, dismayed, terrified. According to Professor Skeat the Old French desmayer was early supplanted by esmayer, also meaning to dismay. Cf. the Italian smagare (put for dis-magare), to lose courage, also to dismay.

P. 428, 1. 8. I had, by my Jailor, some liberty granted me. It is plain by the church books of the Baptist congregation that Bunyan's imprisonment was by no means rigorous during the early period of his incarceration. We have his own authority for the fact of his being permitted to preach, and that not in Bedford and its neighbourhood only, but even in London. It may be to this period of comparative liberty that the story is to be assigned of a clerical justice of the peace sending a messenger to the jail at midnight to inquire whether John Bunyan was safe, in the hope of finding him absent from his prison, a few minutes after his return from one of his lengthened journeys, just in time to save both bis gaoler and himself from the consequences of his unlawful mercifulness.

OF WORDS EXPLAINED IN THE NOTES.

The first number gives the page, the second the line.