fort to him, but before long his old temptation returned upon him, and it was only by force he could keep himself from blaspheming the Sacrament and cursing his fellow-communicants (§ 253)'. His name occurs in the first extant list of members of Mr. Gifford's little community, 'all ancient and grave Christians'; and there are about a dozen references to him in the church books up to his imprisonment in 1660. About this time 'Captain Consumption' who killed Mr. Badman' (one of his most powerfully drawn characters), threatened Bunyan's life; but his naturally robust constitution 'routed his forces' and carried him through what at one time he anticipated would prove a fatal illness (§ 255). The tempter took advantage of his bodily weakness to attack him with his former doubts; but after considerable alternation of hope and fear, faith prevailed. It was not long before Bunyan was proposed as a deacon of the little brotherhood, and he began to exercise his gift of exhortation first privately, and as he gained courage and acceptance in a more publick way.' In 1656 holy Mr. Gifford died, leaving behind him an exhortation to his congregation to mutual charity and forbearance, breathing, as Southey has said, 'a wise, tolerant, and truly Christian spirit.' The year after his death Bunyan's powers as a preacher were formally recognized; and in 1657 an entry in the church-book records

In the same year we find the name, John Bunyan, appended to a memorial existing among the Milton papers, from the people of Bedford 'to the Lord Generall Cromwell, and the rest of the Councell of the Army,' recommending two gentlemen to form part of his intended Council after he had dissolved the Long Parliament (Offor's Life; Works, vol. iii. p. xxx). There are thirty-six names, and this stands the fourteenth. The difference of the handwriting in this signature and in those which are undoubtedly his, together with the improbability that a working tinker who had so recently joined the Church should have gained sufficient consideration to warrant his affixing his signature among magistrates, incumbents of parishes, and other persons of substance and position, renders it very improbable that it is the name of the author of the Pilgrim's Progress. Dr. Brown states that there were at least three other John Bunyans living in Bedford in 1653, who from social position would have been more likely to have signed this document. Though accepted by Mr. Offor, this signature was regarded with grave doubt by Mr. Bruce, the eminent Treasurer of the Society of Antiquaries, to which body these MSS. belong.

that 'brother Bunyan being taken off by the preaching of the Gospel' another member was made deacon in his room. Bunyan was regularly set apart as a preacher of the Word, after the ritual of the Nonconformists, 'after solemn prayer and fasting'; not however so much for Bedford itself, as to itinerate through the villages round about. He still continued to work at his tinkering craft for a livelihood. He soon became famous as a preacher, and people flocked by hundreds from all parts to hear him, though upon sundry and divers accounts,' some, as Southey writes, 'to marvel, and some perhaps to mock; but some also to listen and to be touched with a conviction that they needed a Saviour.' But he was not permitted to preach unmolested. Venner's insurrection in 1657 awoke a feeling of insecurity in the public mind and aggravated the prejudice against Baptists and Quakers, in spite of their protestations of loyalty and disavowal of the principles of the Fifth Monarchy; 'the doctors and priests of the county did open wide against him,' and in 1658 an indictment was preferred against him at the assizes at Eaton. It will be borne in mind that this took place before the Restoration, when Cromwell was still Protector1. But as Dr. Brown observes, ' religious liberty had not come to mean liberty all round, but only liberty for a certain recognized section.' That there was much prosecution during the Protectorate is clear from the history of the Quakers, to say nothing of the intolerant treatment of Roman Catholics and Episcopalians. In Bunyan's own county Quakeresses were sentenced to be whipped and sent to Bridewell for reproving a parish priest, perhaps well deserving of it, and exhorting market-folks to repentance and amendment of life. Even the holy and peaceful Philip Henry was presented in the September of this year at the Flint assizes. 'The simple truth is,' writes Mr. Southey, 'all parties were agreed in the one Catholic opinion that certain doctrines were not to be tolerated'; the only point of difference between them was 'what those doctrines were,' and how far intolerance might be carried. How Bunyan came to escape we do not know. But we hear no more of the indictment, which indeed he does not mention, and of which we should have remained in ignorance but

Book of the Bunyan Festival, p. 8.
b

for the entry in the church-book appointing a day of prayer with reference to that and other urgent matters. Bunyan's celebrity as a preacher aroused other enemies besides those set in motion by the law. Slanders of the blackest dye were circulated with regard to his moral character: it was rumoured up and down that he was a witch, a Jesuit, a highwayman,' that he had 'two wives at once,' and lived a life of gross immorality. These calumnious charges called forth that vehement vindication of himself, to which reference has already been made, in which, in the most solemn manner, he declares his absolute innocence as regards sins of licentiousness, and the purity, in this respect, of his whole life, calling not on men only but on angels to prove him guilty if they could (G. A. §§ 313-317).

We approach now the great crisis in Bunyan's life, but for which his name would have passed away and been forgotten, together with those of thousands of preachers as earnest and as popular as he was. Early in May, 1660, Charles II was proclaimed king, and on the 29th of that month he entered London amid the universal acclamations of all classes of his subjects. Bunyan, as the extracts from his works given by Mr. Offor and Mr. Copner show, was an eminently loyal man, and few would rejoice more heartily at this event which he was to be one of the first to suffer by. Already distant mutterings of the storm of persecution had been heard. Before Charles' landing at Dover the Episcopalians in Wales had been very busy in manifesting their orthodox zeal by the persecution of Quakers and Nonconformists. In the May or June of that year stories are told of sectaries being haled out of their beds to prison, and brought in chains to the quarter sessions. As we have seen, Bunyan had many enemies. The public mind was in a very unquiet state, agitated by the wild schemes of political and religious enthusiasts, who were plotting to destroy the whole existing framework both of Church and State, and set up their own chimerical fabric. In such times we cannot be surprised that, as Southey has said, the 'government rendered suspicious by the constant sense of danger was led as much by fear as by resentment to severities which are explained by the necessities of self-defence.' The acts of relentless severity which still stood unrepealed on the Statute Book, enforcing conformity with the established Church, put a weapon in the hands

of the party in power they were not slow to use. 'It is not generally remembered,' writes Dr. Stoughton', 'that long before the Uniformity, Conventicle, and Five Mile Acts were passed John Bunyan was cast into Bedford Gaol Under these Acts, within six months of the king's arrival, a warrant was issued against Bunyan, and he was arrested for preaching in a private house at Samsell, a hamlet of the village of Harlington about thirteen miles south of Bedford, on November 12, 1660. The intention to arrest him had oozed out, and Bunyan was warned of his danger, and might have escaped if he had chosen; some of his friends advised it: but he had no mind to play the coward, lest he should make an ill savour in the country' and discourage the weaker brethren. The justice before whom he was taken, Mr. Francis Wingate, who seems to have been really desirous to release him, finding all his endeavours, earnestly seconded by his household, useless to lead him to promise to forego preaching, was compelled to make out his 'mittimus' and commit him to the county gaol. While his 'mittimus' was preparing he was reviled by one Dr. Lindale, 'an old enemy to the truth,' who sarcastically reminded him of Alexander the coppersmith who much troubled the apostles-'aiming 'tis like at me,' says Bunyan, 'because I was a tinker'—and comparing him to those who made long prayers that they might devour widows' houses.' But Bunyan was a match for him and paid him back in his own coin. He was given over to the constable, and in his custody returned to

1 Church of the Restoration, vol. i. p. 138.

The old Statute Law of the Realm, 1 Eliz. c. 2, re-enacted with all its rigour 16 Charles II, 4 (1664), required all persons to resort to church every Sunday and holiday, on fine of Is. for each offence and Church censure. 23 Eliz. c. I made the fine £20 a month, and an obstinate offender for twelve months had to be bound to good behaviour by two sureties in £200 each, till he conformed. 29 Eliz. c. 6 em powered the Queen by process out of the Exchequer to seize the goods and two parts of the real property of such offenders, in default of paying these fines. 35 Eliz. c. I made frequenting conventicles punishable by imprisonment. Those who after conviction would not submit were to abjure the realm. Refusal to abjure was felony without benefit of clergy. See also 3 Jacob. 4; 21 Jacob. 4; Stoughton, Church of the Restoration, i. 135.

Relation of Bunyan's Imprisonment, pp. 401 foll.

Bedford, probably passing through his native village of Elstow on the way, and was committed to the prison which, with perhaps a brief interval in 1666, was to be his enforced home for the next twelve years, carrying 'God's comfort in his poor soul.' By an obstinate and widespread error it was long taken for granted that Bunyan's place of confinement was the town gaol, which, as old drawings show us, stood so picturesquely on one of the piers of the many-arched bridge over the Ouse. This idea, on which much sensational writing has been expended, has been satisfactorily proved by Mr. James Wyatt to be a baseless fancy, conjured up with the view of exaggerating the severity of Bunyan's sufferings during his by no means harsh imprisonment, and piling contumely on his persecutors. The bridge-gaol was a corporation 'lock-up-house.' The county prison, to which the county justices' warrant must have committed him, was a much larger and less wretched place of incarceration, now pulled down, occupying the angle between High Street and Silver Street'. Prisons at the best were foul, dark, miserable places in those days, and one who visited Bunyan during his confinement speaks of Bedford gaol as an uncomfortable and close prison': but his own narrative contains no complaint of it, and we may reasonably believe that his condition was by no means so wretched as many of his biographers represent, especially after he had gained the favour of his gaoler, who at a later time was ready to imperil himself to grant indulgence to his notable prisoner. An attempt to procure Bunyan's release by his obtaining sureties having failed, some seven weeks after his committal the quarter sessions were held, and Bunyan was indicted as a person who 'devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming to church to hear divine service, and was a common upholder of unlawful meetings and conventicles to the great disturbance and distraction of all good subjects.' The brutal and blustering Keeling, who afterwards by his base subserviency to an infamous government climbed to the Chief Justice's seat, was chairman of the sessions. Under such a man the issue was predetermined even had there been any question of Bunyan's guilt. But he confessed the indictment, and declared

1 See woodcut of the bridge-gaol heading A Relation of the Imprisonment of Mr. John Bunyan, and the ninth note on the Relation.