THE BEDFORD GAOL.
The irregularities in the proceedings against Bunyan had perhaps been
suggested by the anticipation of the general pardon which was expected
in the following spring. At the coronation of Charles, April 23, 1661,
an order was issued for the release of prisoners who were in gaol for
any offences short of felony. Those who were waiting their trials were
to be let go at once. Those convicted and under sentence might sue out
a pardon under the Great Seal at any time within a year from the
proclamation. Was Bunyan legally convicted or not? He had not pleaded
directly to the indictment. No evidence had been heard against him.
His trial had been a conversation between himself and the Court. The
point had been raised by his friends. His wife had been in London to
make interest for him, and a peer had presented a petition in Bunyan's
behalf in the House of Lords. The judges had been directed to look
again into the matter at the midsummer assizes. The high sheriff was
active in Bunyan's favour. The Judges Twisden, Chester, and no less a
person than Sir Matthew Hale, appear to have concluded that his
conviction was legal, that he could not be tried again, and that he
must apply for pardon in the regular way. His wife, however, at the
instance of the sheriff, obtained a hearing, and they listened
courteously to what she had to say. When she had done, Mr. Justice
Twisden put the natural question, whether, if her husband was
released, he would refrain from preaching in public for the future. If
he intended to repeat his offence immediately that he was at liberty,
his liberty would only bring him into a worse position. The wife at
once said that he dared not leave off preaching as long as he could
speak. The judge asked if she thought her husband was to be allowed to
do as he pleased. She said that he was a peaceable person, and wished
only to be restored to a position in which he could maintain his
family. They had four small children who could not help themselves,
one of them being blind, and they had nothing to live upon as long as
her husband was in prison but the charity of their friends. Hale
remarked that she looked very young to have four children. 'I am but
mother-in-law to them,' she said, 'having not been married yet full
two years. I was with child when my husband was first apprehended, but
being young, I being dismayed at the news fell in labour, and so
continued for eight days. I was delivered, but my child died.'
Hale was markedly kind. He told her that as the conviction had been
recorded they could not set it aside. She might sue out a pardon if
she pleased, or she might obtain 'a writ of error,' which would be
simpler and less expensive.
She left the court in tears--tears, however, which were not altogether
tears of suffering innocence. 'It was not so much,' she said, 'because
they were so hardhearted against me and my husband, but to think what
a sad account such poor creatures would have to give at the coming of
the Lord.' No doubt both Bunyan and she thought themselves cruelly
injured, and they confounded the law with the administration of it.
Persons better informed than they often choose to forget that judges
are sworn to administer the law which they find, and rail at them as
if the sentences which they are obliged by their oaths to pass were
their own personal acts.
A pardon, it cannot be too often said, would have been of no use to
Bunyan, because he was determined to persevere in disobeying a law
which he considered to be unjust. The most real kindness which could
be shown to him was to leave him where he was. His imprisonment was
intended to be little more than nominal. His gaoler, not certainly
without the sanction of the sheriff, let him go where he pleased; once
even so far as London. He used his liberty as he had declared that he
would. 'I followed my wonted course of preaching,' he says, 'taking
all occasions that were put in my hand to visit the people of God.'
This was deliberate defiance. The authorities saw that he must be
either punished in earnest or the law would fall into contempt. He
admitted that he expected to be 'roundly dealt with.' His indulgences
were withdrawn, and he was put into close confinement.
Sessions now followed sessions, and assizes, assizes. His detention
was doubtless irregular, for by law he should have been sent beyond
the seas. He petitioned to be brought to trial again, and complained
loudly that his petition was not listened to; but no legislator, in
framing an Act of Parliament, ever contemplated an offender in so
singular a position. Bunyan was simply trying his strength against the
Crown and Parliament. The judges and magistrates respected his
character, and were unwilling to drive him out of the country; he had
himself no wish for liberty on that condition. The only resource,
therefore, was to prevent him forcibly from repeating an offence that
would compel them to adopt harsh measures which they were so earnestly
trying to avoid.
Such was the world-famous imprisonment of John Bunyan, which has been
the subject of so much eloquent declamation. It lasted in all for more
than twelve years. It might have ended at any time if he would have
promised to confine his addresses to a private circle. It did end
after six years. He was released under the first declaration of
indulgence; but as he instantly recommenced his preaching, he was
arrested again. Another six years went by; he was again let go, and
was taken once more immediately after, preaching in a wood. This time
he was detained but a few months, and in form more than reality. The
policy of the government was then changed, and he was free for the
rest of his life.
His condition during his long confinement has furnished a subject for
pictures which if correct would be extremely affecting. It is true
that, being unable to attend to his usual business, he spent his
unoccupied hours in making tags for bootlaces. With this one fact to
build on, and with the assumption that the scene of his sufferings was
the Bridge Lockhouse, Nonconformist imagination has drawn a 'den' for
us, 'where there was not a yard or a court to walk in for daily
exercise;' 'a damp and dreary cell;' 'a narrow chink which admits a
few scanty rays of light to render visible the abode of woe;' 'the
prisoner, pale and emaciated, seated on the humid earth, pursuing his
daily task, to earn the morsel which prolongs his existence and his
confinement together. Near him, reclining in pensive sadness, his
blind daughter, five other distressed children, and an affectionate
wife, whom pinching want and grief have worn down to the gate of
death. Ten summer suns have rolled over the mansion of his misery
whose reviving rays have never once penetrated his sad abode,' &c. &c.
If this description resembles or approaches the truth, I can but say
that to have thus abandoned to want their most distinguished pastor
and his family was intensely discreditable to the Baptist community.
English prisons in the seventeenth century were not models of good
management. But prisoners, whose friends could pay for them, were not
consigned to damp and dreary cells; and in default of evidence of
which not a particle exists, I cannot charge so reputable a community
with a neglect so scandalous. The entire story is in itself
incredible. Bunyan was prosperous in his business. He was respected
and looked up to by a large and growing body of citizens, including
persons of wealth and position in London. He was a representative
sufferer fighting the battle of all the Nonconformists in England. He
had active supporters in the town of Bedford and among the gentlemen
of the county. The authorities, so far as can be inferred from their
actions, tried from the first to deal as gently with him as he would
allow them to do. Is it conceivable that the Baptists would have left
his family to starve; or that his own confinement would have been made
so absurdly and needlessly cruel? Is it not far more likely that he
found all the indulgences which money could buy and the rules of the
prison would allow? Bunyan is not himself responsible for these wild
legends. Their real character appears more clearly when we observe how
he was occupied during these years.
Friends, in the first place, had free access to him, and strangers who
were drawn to him by reputation; while the gaol was considered a
private place, and he was allowed to preach there, at least
occasionally, to his fellow-prisoners. Charles Doe, a distinguished
Nonconformist, visited him in his confinement, and has left an account
of what he saw. 'When I was there,' he writes, 'there were about sixty
dissenters besides himself, taken but a little before at a religious
meeting at Kaistor, in the county of Bedford, besides two eminent
dissenting ministers, Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Dun, by which means the
prison was much crowded. Yet, in the midst of all that hurry, I heard
Mr. Bunyan both preach and pray with that mighty spirit of faith and
plerophory of Divine assistance, that he made me stand and wonder.
Here they could sing without fear of being overheard; no informers
prowling round, and the world shut out.'
This was not all. A fresh and more severe Conventicle Act was passed
in 1670. Attempts were made to levy fines in the town of Bedford.
There was a riot there. The local officers refused to assist in
quelling it. The shops were shut. Bedford was occupied by soldiers.
Yet, at this very time, Bunyan was again allowed to go abroad through
general connivance. He spent his nights with his family. He even
preached now and then in the woods. Once when he had intended to be
out for the night, information was given to a clerical magistrate in
the neighbourhood, who disliked him, and a constable was sent to
ascertain if the prisoners were all within ward. Bunyan had received a
hint of what was coming. He was in his place when the constable came;
and the governor of the gaol is reported to have said to him, 'You may
go out when you please, for you know better when to return than I can
tell you.' Parliament might pass laws, but the execution of them
depended on the local authorities. Before the Declaration of
Indulgence, the Baptist church in Bedford was reopened. Bunyan, while
still nominally in confinement, attended its meetings. In 1671 he
became an Elder; in December of that year he was chosen Pastor. The
question was raised whether, as a prisoner, he was eligible. The
objection would not have been set aside had he been unable to
undertake the duties of the office. These facts prove conclusively
that, for a part at least of the twelve years, the imprisonment was
little more than formal. He could not have been in the Bridge Gaol
when he had sixty fellow-prisoners, and was able to preach to them in
private. It is unlikely that at any time he was made to suffer any
greater hardships than were absolutely inevitable.
But whether Bunyan's confinement was severe or easy, it was otherwise
of inestimable value to him. It gave him leisure to read and reflect.
Though he preached often, yet there must have been intervals, perhaps
long intervals, of compulsory silence. The excitement of perpetual
speech-making is fatal to the exercise of the higher qualities. The
periods of calm enabled him to discover powers in himself of which he
might otherwise have never known the existence. Of books he had but
few; for a time only the Bible and Foxe's 'Martyrs.' But the Bible
thoroughly known is a literature of itself--the rarest and the richest
in all departments of thought or imagination which exists. Foxe's
'Martyrs,' if he had a complete edition of it, would have given him a
very adequate knowledge of history. With those two books he had no
cause to complain of intellectual destitution. He must have read more,
however. He knew George Herbert--perhaps Spenser--perhaps 'Paradise
Lost.' But of books, except of the Bible, he was at no time a great
student. Happily for himself, he had no other book of Divinity, and he
needed none. His real study was human life as he had seen it, and the
human heart as he had experienced the workings of it. Though he never
mastered successfully the art of verse, he had other gifts which
belong to a true poet. He had imagination, if not of the highest, yet
of a very high order. He had infinite inventive humour, tenderness,
and, better than all, powerful masculine sense. To obtain the use of
these faculties he needed only composure, and this his imprisonment
secured for him. He had published several theological compositions
before his arrest, which have relatively little value. Those which he
wrote in prison--even on theological subjects--would alone have made
him a reputation as a Nonconformist divine. In no other writings are
the peculiar views of Evangelical Calvinism brought out more clearly,
or with a more heartfelt conviction of their truth. They have
furnished an arsenal from which English Protestant divines have ever
since equipped themselves. The most beautiful of them, 'Grace
Abounding to the Chief of Sinners,' is his own spiritual biography,
which contains the account of his early history. The first part of the
'Pilgrim's Progress' was composed there as an amusement. To this, and
to his other works which belong to literature, I shall return in a
future chapter.
Visitors who saw him in the gaol found his manner and presence as
impressive as his writings. 'He was mild and affable in conversation,'
says one of them, 'not given to loquacity or to much discourse, unless
some urgent occasion required. It was observed he never spoke of
himself or of his talents, but seemed low in his own eyes. He was
never heard to reproach or revile any, whatever injury he received,
but rather rebuked those who did so. He managed all things with such
exactness as if he had made it his study not to give offence.'
The final 'Declaration of Indulgence' came at last, bringing with it
the privilege for which Bunyan had fought and suffered. Charles II.
cared as little for liberty as his father or his brother, but he
wished to set free the Catholics, and as a step towards it he conceded
a general toleration to the Protestant Dissenters. Within two years of
the passing of the Conventicle Act of 1670, this and every other penal
law against Nonconformists was suspended. They were allowed to open
their 'meeting houses' for 'worship and devotion,' subject only to a
few easy conditions. The localities were to be specified in which
chapels were required, and the ministers were to receive their
licenses from the Crown. To prevent suspicions, the Roman Catholics
were for the present excluded from the benefit of the concession. Mass
could be said, as before, only in private houses. A year later the
Proclamation was confirmed by Act of Parliament.
Thus Bunyan's long imprisonment was ended. The cause was won. He had
been its foremost representative and champion, and was one of the
first persons to receive the benefit of the change of policy. He was
now forty-four years old. The order for his release was signed on May
8, 1672. His license as pastor of the Baptist chapel at Bedford was
issued on the 9th. He established himself in a small house in the
town. 'When he came abroad,' says one, '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.' As much
as possible; but not entirely. In 1685, being afraid of a return of
persecution, he made over, as a precaution, his whole estate to his
wife; 'All and singular his goods, chattels, debts, ready money,
plate, rings, household stuff, apparel, utensils, brass, pewter,
bedding, and all his other substance.' In this deed he still describes
himself as a brazier. The language is that of a man in easy, if not
ample circumstances. 'Though by reason of losses which he sustained by
imprisonment,' says another biographer, 'his treasures swelled not to
excess, he always had sufficient to live decently and creditably.' His
writings and his sufferings had made him famous throughout England. He
became the actual head of the Baptist community. Men called him, half
in irony, half in seriousness, Bishop Bunyan, and he passed the rest
of his life honourably and innocently, occupied in writing, preaching,
district visiting, and opening daughter churches. Happy in his work,
happy in the sense that his influence was daily extending--spreading
over his own country, and to the far-off settlements in America, he
spent his last years in his own land of Beulah, Doubting Castle out of
sight, and the towers and minarets of Emmanuel Land growing nearer and
clearer as the days went on.
He had not detected, or at least, at first, he did not detect, the
sinister purpose which lay behind the Indulgence. The exception of the
Roman Catholics gave him perfect confidence in the Government, and
after his release he published a 'Discourse upon Antichrist,' with a
preface, in which he credited Charles with the most righteous
intentions, and urged his countrymen to be loyal and faithful to him.
His object in writing it, he said, 'was to testify his loyalty to the
King, his love to the brethren, and his service to his country.'
Antichrist was of course the Pope, the deadliest of all enemies to
vital Christianity. To its kings and princes England owed its past
deliverance from him. To kings England must look for his final
overthrow.
'As the noble King Henry VIII. did cast down the Antichristian
worship, so he cast down the laws that held it up; so also did the
good King Edward his son. The brave Queen Elizabeth, also, the sister
of King Edward, left of things of this nature to her lasting fame
behind her.' Cromwell he dared not mention--perhaps he did not wish to
mention him. But he evidently believed that there was better hope in
Charles Stuart than in conspiracy and revolution.
'Kings,' he said, 'must be the men that shall down with Antichrist,
and they shall down with her in God's time. God hath begun to draw the
hearts of some of them from her already, and He will set them in time
against her round about. If, therefore, they do not that work so fast
as we would have them, let us exercise patience and hope in God. 'Tis
a wonder they go as fast as they do since the concerns of whole
kingdoms lie upon their shoulders, and there are so many Sanballats
and Tobias's to flatter them and misinform them. Let the King have
visibly a place in your hearts, and with heart and mouth give God
thanks for him. He is a better Saviour of us than we may be aware of,
and hath delivered us from more deaths than we can tell how to think.
We are bidden to give God thanks for all men, and in the first place
for kings, and all that are in authority. Be not angry with them, no
not in thy thought. But consider if they go not in the work of
Reformation so fast as thou wouldest they should, the fault may be
thine. Know that thou also hast thy cold and chill frames of heart,
and sittest still when thou shouldest be up and doing. Pray for the
long life of the King. Pray that God would give wisdom and judgment to
the King. Pray that God would discern all plots and conspiracies
against his person and government. I do confess myself one of the
old-fashioned professors that wish to fear God and honour the King. I
am also for blessing them that curse me, for doing good to them that
hate me, and for praying for them that despitefully use me and
persecute me; and I have had more peace in the practice of these
things than all the world are aware of.'
The Stuarts, both Charles and James, were grateful for Bunyan's
services. The Nonconformists generally went up and down in Royal
favour; lost their privileges and regained them as their help was
needed or could be dispensed with. But Bunyan was never more molested.
He did what he liked. He preached where he pleased, and no one
troubled him or called him to account. He was not insincere. His
constancy in enduring so long an imprisonment which a word from him
would have ended, lifts him beyond the reach of unworthy suspicions.
But he disapproved always of violent measures. His rule was to submit
to the law; and where, as he said, he could not obey actively, then to
bear with patience the punishment that might be inflicted on him.
Perhaps he really hoped, as long as hope was possible, that good might
come out of the Stuarts.