With his time so largely occupied in his spiritual functions, he could have had but small leisure to devote to his worldly calling. This, however, one of so honest and independent a spirit is sure not to have neglected, it was indeed necessary that to a certain extent he should work for his living. He had a family to maintain. His congregation were mostly of the poorer sort, unable to contribute much to their pastor’s support. Had it been otherwise, Bunyan was the last man in the world to make a trade of the gospel, and though never hesitating to avail himself of the apostolic privilege to “live of the gospel,” he, like the apostle of the Gentiles, would never be ashamed to “work with his own hands,” that he might “minister to his own necessities,” and those of his family. But from the time of his release he regarded his ministerial work as the chief work of his life. “When he came abroad,” says one who knew him, “he found his temporal affairs were gone to wreck, and he had as to them to begin again as if he had newly come into the world. But yet he was not destitute of friends, who had all along supported him with necessaries and had been very good to his family, so that by their assistance getting things a little about him again, he resolved as much as possible to decline worldly business, and give himself wholly up to the service of God.” The anonymous writer to whom we are indebted for information concerning his imprisonment and his subsequent life, says that Bunyan, “contenting himself with that little God had bestowed upon him, sequestered himself from all secular employments to follow that of his call to the ministry.” The fact, however, that in the “deed of gift” of all his property to his wife in 1685, he still describes himself as a “brazier,” puts it beyond all doubt that though his ministerial duties were his chief concern, he prudently kept fast hold of his handicraft as a certain means of support for himself and those dependent on him. On the whole, Bunyan’s outward circumstances were probably easy. His wants were few and easily supplied. “Having food and raiment” for himself, his wife, and his children, he was “therewith content.” The house in the parish of St. Cuthbert’s which was his home from his release to his death (unhappily demolished fifty years back), shows the humble character of his daily life. It was a small cottage, such as labourers now occupy, with three small rooms on the ground floor, and a garret with a diminutive dormer window under the high-pitched tiled roof. Behind stood an outbuilding which served as his workshop. We have a passing glimpse of this cottage home in the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary. One Mr. Bagford, otherwise unknown to us, had once “walked into the country” on purpose to see “the study of John Bunyan,” and the student who made it famous. On his arrival the interviewer—as we should now call him—met with a civil and courteous reception from Bunyan; but he found the contents of his study hardly larger than those of his prison cell. They were limited to a Bible, and copies of “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” and a few other books, chiefly his own works, “all lying on a shelf or shelves.” Slight as this sketch is, it puts us more in touch with the immortal dreamer than many longer and more elaborate paragraphs.
Bunyan’s celebrity as a preacher, great before he was shut up in gaol, was naturally enhanced by the circumstance of his imprisonment. The barn in Josias Roughead’s orchard, where he was licensed as a preacher, was “so thronged the first time he appeared there to edify, that many were constrained to stay without; every one that was of his persuasion striving to partake of his instructions.” Wherever he ministered, sometimes, when troublous days returned, in woods, and in dells, and other hiding-places, the announcement that John Bunyan was to preach gathered a large and attentive auditory, hanging on his lips and drinking from them the word of life. His fame grew the more he was known and reached its climax when his work was nearest its end. His biographer Charles Doe tells us that just before his death, “when Mr. Bunyan preached in London, if there were but one day’s notice given, there would be more people come together than the meeting-house could hold. I have seen, by my computation, about twelve hundred at a morning lecture by seven o’clock on a working day, in the dark winter time. I also computed about three thousand that came to hear him one Lord’s Day in London, at a town’s-end meeting-house, so that half were fain to go back again for want of room, and then himself was fain at a back door to be pulled almost over people to get upstairs to his pulpit.” This “town’s-end meeting house” has been identified by some with a quaint straggling long building which once stood in Queen Street, Southwark, of which there is an engraving in Wilkinson’s “Londina Illustrata.” Doe’s account, however, probably points to another building, as the Zoar Street meeting-house was not opened for worship till about six months before Bunyan’s death, and then for Presbyterian service. Other places in London connected with his preaching are Pinners’ Hall in Old Broad Street, where, on one of his occasional visits, he delivered his striking sermon on “The Greatness of the Soul and the Unspeakableness of the Loss thereof,” first published in 1683; and Dr. Owen’s meeting-house in White’s Alley, Moorfields, which was the gathering-place for titled folk, city merchants, and other Nonconformists of position and degree. At earlier times, when the penal laws against Nonconformists were in vigorous exercise, Bunyan had to hold his meetings by stealth in private houses and other places where he might hope to escape the lynx-eyed informer. It was at one of these furtive meetings that his earliest biographer, the honest combmaker at the foot of London Bridge, Charles Doe, first heard him preach. His choice of an Old Testament text at first offended Doe, who had lately come into New Testament light and had had enough of the “historical and doing-for-favour of the Old Testament.” But as he went on he preached “so New Testament like” that his hearer’s prejudices vanished, and he could only “admire, weep for joy, and give the preacher his affections.”
Bunyan was more than once urged to leave Bedford and settle in the metropolis. But to all these solicitations he turned a deaf ear. Bedford was the home of his deepest affections. It was there the holy words of the poor women “sitting in the sun,” speaking “as if joy did make them speak,” had first “made his heart shake,” and shown him that he was still a stranger to vital godliness. It was there he had been brought out of darkness into light himself, and there too he had been the means of imparting the same blessing to others. The very fact of his long imprisonment had identified him with the town and its inhabitants. There he had a large and loving congregation, to whom he was bound by the ties of a common faith and common sufferings. Many of these recognized in Bunyan their spiritual father; all, save a few “of the baser sort,” reverenced him as their teacher and guide. No prospect of a wider field of usefulness, still less of a larger income, could tempt him to desert his “few sheep in the wilderness.” Some of them, it is true, were wayward sheep, who wounded the heart of their pastor by breaking from the fold, and displaying very un-lamb-like behaviour. He had sometimes to realize painfully that no pale is so close but that the enemy will creep in somewhere and seduce the flock; and that no rules of communion, however strict, can effectually exclude unworthy members. Brother John Stanton had to be admonished “for abusing his wife and beating her often for very light matters” (if the matters had been less light, would the beating in these days have been thought justifiable?); and Sister Mary Foskett, for “privately whispering of a horrid scandal, ‘without culler of truth,’ against Brother Honeylove.” Evil-speaking and backbiting set brother against brother. Dissensions and heartburnings grieved Bunyan’s spirit. He himself was not always spared. A letter had to be written to Sister Hawthorn “by way of reproof for her unseemly language against Brother Scot and the whole Church.” John Wildman was had up before the Church and convicted of being “an abominable liar and slanderer,” “extraordinary guilty” against “our beloved Brother Bunyan himself.” And though Sister Hawthorn satisfied the Church by “humble acknowledgment of her miscariag,” the bolder misdoer only made matters worse by “a frothy letter,” which left no alternative but a sentence of expulsion. But though Bunyan’s flock contained some whose fleeces were not as white as he desired, these were the exception. The congregation meeting in Josias Roughead’s barn must have been, take them as a whole, a quiet, God-fearing, spiritually-minded folk, of whom their pastor could think with thankfulness and satisfaction as “his hope and joy and crown of rejoicing.” From such he could not be severed lightly. Inducements which would have been powerful to a meaner nature fell dead on his independent spirit. He was not “a man that preached by way of bargain for money,” and, writes Doe, “more than once he refused a more plentiful income to keep his station.” As Dr. Brown says: “He was too deeply rooted on the scene of his lifelong labours and sufferings to think of striking his tent till the command came from the Master to come up to the higher service for which he had been ripening so long.” At Bedford, therefore, he remained; quietly staying on in his cottage in St. Cuthbert’s, and ministering to his humble flock, loving and beloved, as Mr. Froude writes, “through changes of ministry, Popish plots, and Monmouth rebellions, while the terror of a restoration of Popery was bringing on the Revolution; careless of kings and cabinets, and confident that Giant Pope had lost his power for harm, and thenceforward could only bite his nails at the passing pilgrims.”
Bunyan’s peace was not, however, altogether undisturbed. Once it received a shock in a renewal of his imprisonment, though only for a brief period, in 1675, to which we owe the world-famous “Pilgrim’s Progress”; and it was again threatened, though not actually disturbed ten years later, when the renewal of the persecution of the Nonconformists induced him to make over all his property—little enough in good sooth—to his wife by deed of gift.
The former of these events demands our attention, not so much for itself as for its connection with Bishop Barlow’s interference in Bunyan’s behalf, and, still more, for its results in the production of “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” Until very recently the bare fact of this later imprisonment, briefly mentioned by Charles Doe and another of his early biographers, was all that was known to us. They even leave the date to be gathered, though both agree in limiting its duration to six months or thereabouts. The recent discovery, among the Chauncey papers, by Mr. W. G. Thorpe, of the original warrant under which Bunyan was at this time sent to gaol, supplies the missing information. It has been already noticed that the Declaration of Indulgence, under which Bunyan was liberated in 1672, was very short-lived. Indeed it barely lasted in force a twelvemonth. Granted on the 15th of March of that year, it was withdrawn on the 9th of March of the following year, at the instance of the House of Commons, who had taken alarm at a suspension of the laws of the realm by the “inherent power” of the sovereign, without the advice or sanction of Parliament. The Declaration was cancelled by Charles II., the monarch, it is said, tearing off the Great Seal with his own hands, a subsidy being promised to the royal spendthrift as a reward for his complaisance. The same year the Test Act became law. Bunyan therefore and his fellow Nonconformists were in a position of greater peril, as far as the letter of the law was concerned, than they had ever been. But, as Dr. Stoughton has remarked, “the letter of the law is not to be taken as an accurate index of the Nonconformists’ condition. The pressure of a bad law depends very much upon the hands employed in its administration.” Unhappily for Bunyan, the parties in whose hands the execution of the penal statutes against Nonconformists rested in Bedfordshire were his bitter personal enemies, who were not likely to let them lie inactive. The prime mover in the matter was doubtless Dr. William Foster, that “right Judas” whom we shall remember holding the candle in Bunyan’s face in the hall of Harlington House at his first apprehension, and showing such feigned affection “as if he would have leaped on his neck and kissed him.” He had some time before this become Chancellor of the Bishop of Lincoln, and Commissary of the Court of the Archdeacon of Bedford, offices which put in his hands extensive powers which he had used with the most relentless severity. He has damned himself to eternal infamy by the bitter zeal he showed in hunting down Dissenters, inflicting exorbitant fines, and breaking into their houses and distraining their goods for a full discharge, maltreating their wives and daughters, and haling the offenders to prison. Having been chiefly instrumental in Bunyan’s first committal to gaol, he doubtless viewed his release with indignation as the leader of the Bedfordshire sectaries who was doing more mischief to the cause of conformity, which it was his province at all hazards to maintain, than any other twenty men. The church would never be safe till he was clapped in prison again. The power to do this was given by the new proclamation. By this act the licenses to preach previously granted to Nonconformists were recalled. Henceforward no conventicle had “any authority, allowance, or encouragement from his Majesty.” We can easily imagine the delight with which Foster would hail the issue of this proclamation. How he would read and read again with ever fresh satisfaction its stringent clauses. That pestilent fellow, Bunyan, was now once more in his clutches. This time there was no chance of his escape. All licences were recalled, and he was absolutely defenceless. It should not be Foster’s fault if he failed to end his days in the prison from which he ought never to have been released. The proclamation is dated the 4th of March, 1674-5, and was published in the Gazette on the 9th. It would reach Bedford on the 11th. It placed Bunyan at the mercy of “his enemies, who struck at him forthwith.” A warrant was issued for his apprehension, undoubtedly written by our old friend, Paul Cobb, the clerk of the peace, who, it will be remembered, had acted in the same capacity on Bunyan’s first committal. It is dated the 4th of March, and bears the signature of no fewer than thirteen magistrates, ten of them affixing their seals.
That so unusually large a number took part in the execution of this warrant, is sufficient indication of the importance attached to Bunyan’s imprisonment by the gentry of the county. The following is the document:—
“To the Constables of Bedford and to every of them
Whereas information and complaint is made unto us that (notwithstanding the Kings Majties late Act of most gracious generall and free pardon to all his subjects for past misdemeanours that by his said clemencie and indulgent grace and favor they might bee mooved and induced for the time to come more carefully to observe his Highenes lawes and Statutes and to continue in theire loyall and due obedience to his Majtie) Yett one John Bunnyon of youre said Towne Tynker hath divers times within one month last past in contempt of his Majtie’s good Lawes preached or teached at a Conventicle Meeting or Assembly under color or ptence of exercise of Religion in other manner than according to the Liturgie or practiss of the Church of England These are therefore in his Majties name to comand you forthwith to apprehend and bring the Body of the said John Bunnion before us or any of us or other his Majties Justice of Peace within the said County to answer the premisses and further to doo and receave as to Lawe and Justice shall appertaine and hereof you are not to faile. Given under our handes and seales this ffourth day of March in the seven and twentieth yeare of the Raigne of our most gracious Soveraigne Lord King Charles the Second A que Dni., juxta &c 1674
J Napier W Beecher G Blundell Hum: Monoux
Will ffranklin John Ventris
Will Spencer
Will Gery St Jo Chernocke Wm Daniels
T Browne W ffoster
Gaius Squire”
There would be little delay in the execution of the warrant.
John Bunyan was a marked man and an old offender, who, on his arrest, would be immediately committed for trial. Once more, then, Bunyan became a prisoner, and that, there can be little doubt, in his old quarters in the Bedford gaol. Errors die hard, and those by whom they have been once accepted find it difficult to give them up. The long-standing tradition of Bunyan’s twelve years’ imprisonment in the little lock-up-house on the Ouse bridge, having been scattered to the winds by the logic of fact and common sense, those to whom the story is dear, including the latest and ablest of his biographers, Dr. Brown, see in this second brief imprisonment a way to rehabilitate it. Probability pointing to this imprisonment as the time of the composition of “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” they hold that on this occasion Bunyan was committed to the bridge-gaol, and that he there wrote his immortal work, though they fail to bring forward any satisfactory reasons for the change of the place of his confinement. The circumstances, however, being the same, there can be no reasonable ground for questioning that, as before, Bunyan was imprisoned in the county gaol.
This last imprisonment of Bunyan’s lasted only half as many months as his former imprisonment had lasted years. At the end of six months he was again a free man. His release was due to the good officers of Owen, Cromwell’s celebrated chaplain, with Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln. The suspicion which hung over this intervention from its being erroneously attributed to his release in 1672, three years before Barlow became a bishop, has been dispelled by the recently discovered warrant. The dates and circumstances are now found to tally. The warrant for Bunyan’s apprehension bears date March 4, 1675. On the 14th of the following May the supple and time-serving Barlow, after long and eager waiting for a mitre, was elected to the see of Lincoln vacated by the death of Bishop Fuller, and consecrated on the 27th of June. Barlow, a man of very dubious churchmanship, who had succeeded in keeping his university appointments undisturbed all through the Commonwealth, and who was yet among the first with effusive loyalty to welcome the restoration of monarchy, had been Owen’s tutor at Oxford, and continued to maintain friendly relations with him. As bishop of the diocese to which Bedfordshire then, and long after, belonged, Barlow had the power, by the then existing law, of releasing a prisoner for nonconformity on a bond given by two persons that he would conform within half a year. A friend of Bunyan’s, probably Ichabod Chauncey, obtained a letter from Owen to the bishop requesting him to employ this prerogative in Bunyan’s behalf. Barlow with hollow complaisance expressed his particular kindness for Dr. Owen, and his desire to deny him nothing he could legally grant. He would even strain a point to serve him. But he had only just been made a bishop, and what was asked was a new thing to him. He desired a little time to consider of it. If he could do it, Owen might be assured of his readiness to oblige him. A second application at the end of a fortnight found this readiness much cooled. It was true that on inquiry he found he might do it; but the times were critical, and he had many enemies. It would be safer for him not to take the initiative. Let them apply to the Lord Chancellor, and get him to issue an order for him to release Bunyan on the customary bond. Then he would do what Owen asked. It was vain to tell Barlow that the way he suggested was chargeable, and Bunyan poor. Vain also to remind him that there was no point to be strained. He had satisfied himself that he might do the thing legally. It was hoped he would remember his promise. But the bishop would not budge from the position he had taken up. They had his ultimatum; with that they must be content. If Bunyan was to be liberated, his friends must accept Barlow’s terms. “This at last was done, and the poor man was released. But little thanks to the bishop.”