The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013169911 Cornell University Library PR3331.B871886 John Bunyan, his life, and woric, 3 1924 013 169 911 JOHN BUNYAN [The Bight of Translation and Eeprodudion is Reserved.] ^^ ^-. '''^yc\/n. From Eobebt White's Pbtoh Dbawinq (Oracheroae Colleotiou, Bi-itish Museum). ® JOHN BUNYAN HIS LIFE TIMES AND WORK JOHN BROWN B.A. MINISTER OF THE CHURCH AT BUNYAN MEETING BEDFORD IRtSi^^ ^^W ^^^K^ % ^^^^^^^§^ 1^^^ 1 E^tftri.t5QI»k| SSitb ^ortrsit anb Utofnts-fibc iUttBtrstions bg ffiitoari aahijmpa FAO SIMILE OF WILL ETO. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1886 LONDON : PRINTED BY J. B. VIKTOK AND CO., UUITBD, CITY ROAD. TO HIS GRACE FRANCIS CHARLES HASTINGS RUSSELL, K.G., NINTH DUKE OF BBDFOED ; WHOSE ANCESTOBS HAVE RENDERED MANY AND EMINENT SERVICES TO THJ GREAT CAUSE OF CIVIL AND BELIGIOUS FREEDOM j AND WHO HIMSELF ERECTED IN THE TOWN OF BEDFORD A MONUMENTAL STATUE' OF THE AUTHOE OF THE "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS"; AND ALSO PRESENTED BRONZE MEMORIAL DOORS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THAT GREAT ALLEGORY TO THE CONGREGATION OF BUNYAN MEETING ; THESE MEMORIALS OF JOHN BUNYAN ARE BY HIS grace's KIND FERMISSIOK RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. PREFACE. EvEEY author has, of course, a more or less suificient reason for sending forth, his book to the world. If I honestly gave mine I should say that in the first instance I drifted into its production by force of circumstances rather than set it before myself of deliberate choice. As the minister for more than twenty years of the church of which Bunyan also was minister, and as the official guardian of such personal relics and memorials of him as remain to us, I have necessarily been brought into intercourse with the yearly increasing stream of visitors who, from all parts of the world, come to Bedford and Elstow to see for themselves the scenes and associations of Bunyan's life. I have found from a somewhat wide observation that, more than most writers, he has not only secured the intellectual interest of his readers, but also their personal affection ; and that everything relating to him that can be reliably told is matter of unfailing interest to minds the most diverse. Innumerable questions from others, therefore, first sent me forth on researches of my own, and, as a relaxation from the more serious duties of my ministry, this work became to me one of the pleasures of my life. viii PREFACE. I send the result forth now in the hope that others may share this pleasure with me, and under the convic- tion that, notwithstanding the many lives of Bunyan that have appeared, there is still room, and even need, for one that should aim at strictest accuracy, and bring up to present date all that can be known concerning him. My long residence among the scenes and surroundings of Bunyan's life has given me some advantage over previous biographers, who were only able to make occa- sional visits to the neighbourhood. I have had, how- ever, still greater advantage in the fact that recent years have made available, for purposes of local and personal history, resources till quite lately unknown or inacces- sible to the historical student. For the purpose of this biography researches have been made among the stores brought to light by the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts. Through the labours of the gentlemen who have acted as inspectors under that commission, there have been found among the MSS. of the House of Lords and in the numerous private collections scattered through the country, documents which have supplied missing links in our history, and made more vivid to us the story of the past. The papers relating to the diocese of Lincoln, in the Archbishop's Library at Lambeth, I have also found to be of considerable interest and value. I have, of course, availed myself of the priceless stores garnered up among the State Papers at the Record Office, and among the steadily accumulating materials in the manuscript and printed book departments of the British Museum. I have also found great help from the collections in the Bodleian, in the University Library at PREFACE. ix Cambridge, and in Dr. Williams' Library in London. Among resources of a more local kind I have found the most valuable assistance from the Transcript Eegisters and Act-Books of the Archdeaconry of Bedford, the Minute-Books and other documents in the Archives of the Bedford Corporation, and the Bedfordshire wills pre- served in the district registry of the Court of Probate at Northampton. In addition to these materials of a more public and national character the records of the church at Bedford, with which Bunyan was so long associated, have for the first time been woven into the story of his life ; and for the first time, also, his general works have been placed in due order and chronological relation to his personal history. On this latter point it may be well to say, that as during the sixty years of Bunyan's life he wrote something like sixty books, the account of most of these had necessarily to come within limited space. I have, therefore, sought to give not so much an abstract or general estimate as to bring together whatever was most characteristic of his special genius and cast of mind. In the course of these researches I have always found the name of Bunyan a certain spell with which to divine, and I have most gratefully to record the readiness on all hands to afford me the most kindly help in the further- ance of my enterprise. Where so many have been kind it seems invidious to make selection for special acknow- ledgment, yet I feel I must express my personal thanks to Archdeacon Bathurst for ready access, readily granted, to the documents in the Archives of his PREFA CE. registry, also for important references or suggestions, and sometimes both, to the Eev. S. E. Wigram, author of " The Chronicles of the Abbey at Elstow; " to Henry Gough, Esq., F.S.A., of Eedhill; to Edward Arber, Esq., F.S.A., of Mason Science College, Birmingham; to Edward Peacock, Esq., F.S.A., of Bottesford Manor, Brigg ; to J. AUanson Picton, Esq., M.P. ; and to J. E- Bailey, Esq., F.S.A., of Manchester. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the sympathetic zeal with which Mr. Edward Whymper has undertaken the work of illustration. The choice of subjects has been made in great measure on his suggestion ; and the sketches, taken by him on the spot, of places and buildings asso- ciated with memories of Bunyan will perhaps do more than is possible by any verbal descriptions to give local colouring to the narrative. It is hoped also that the value of this work will be increased by his careful reproduction of the Portrait of Bunyan, taken on vellum, by Eobert White, which was preserved in the Cracherode Collec- tion, and which forms the frontispiece to this volume. JOHN BEOWN. The Manse, Bedfoud, October lith, 1885. PKEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. This edition, with the exception of a few verbal cor- rections and the addition of a Chronological List of Bunyan's Works, remains the same as the first. In sending it forth after so short an interval, I cannot but gratefully acknowledge the kind and indulgent reception so widely accorded to this new attempt to reproduce the facts of Bunyan's life. I should be exacting indeed were I not more than gratified by the many expressions of opinion, both public and private, which seem to in- dicate that the book has met and supplied what was felt to be a want in our literature. JOHN BKOWN. Bedfobd, April IZth, 1886. CONTEXTS. I. EARLY CHrECH LIFE IX BEDFORDSHIRE .... 1 n. ELSTOW AXD THE BrXTANS OF ELSTOW . . . IT in. THE CIVIL WARS . . . .... 39 IV. SPIRITUAL CO^"TLICT . . 53 Y. THE CHrRCH AT BEDFORD ... 69 VI. FIVE TEARS OP BEDFORD LIFE : 1655—1660 .... 96 vn. HARLIXGTOX HOU.SE AHD THE CHAPEL OF HEENE 130 Tin. TWEL\"E TEAR.S IX BEDFORD GAOL ... 160 IX. THE CHURCH IX THE STOEM 192 X. THREE YEARS OF LIBERTY : 1672—1675 . . . 223 xiv CONTENTS. XI. PAGB THE "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 253 xn. THE PLACE OF THE "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" IN LITERA- TCRE ... 282 XIII. INTERVAL BETWEEN THE "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" AND THE "HOLY WAR": 1676—1682 301 XIV. MANSOUL AND THE BEDFORD CORPORATION . . .321 XV. IN THE REIGN OF JAMES THE SECOND 346 XVI. BDNYAN'S LAST DAYS 371 XVII. BUNYAN'S DESCENDANTS AND SUCCESSORS . . .397 XVIII. BUNYAN'S POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATIONS . . .427 XIX. EDITIONS, VERSIONS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND IMITATIONS OF THE " PILGRIM'S PROGRESS " 453 APPENDICES. APPENDIX I. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF BUNYAN'S WORKS 483 II. FOREIGN VERSIONS OF THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 489 „ III. VERSIONS, BIOGRAPHIES, LECTURES . . 493 „ IV. PERSONAJj RELICS OF BUNYAN . . 496 LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS. PAGE 1. Portrait of Bunyan (from a, drawing by EoTjert White, in the Cracherode Collection, British Museum) .... Frontispiece 2. Bedford Town Gaol (from an old Print) ... 1 3. Elstow Church .17 4. West View of Elstow Church . . . _ . - .19 5. HlLLERSDON PoROH . . 21 6. Moot Hall on Elstow Green, the Court-house of the Manor. 25 7. Map of Bedford and Elstow (showing Bunyan's Birthplace) . . 29 8. Fac-similes from the Elstow Transcript Registers ... 32 9. Elstow Church from the Abbey Fishponds ..... 37 10. Bunyan's Cottage at Elstow. (His place of abode after his Mar- riage, 1649-1655) ... 53 11. Elstow Green . . 61 12. Belfry Door, Elstow . ... .63 13. St. John's Church, Bedford . ..... 91 14. Speed's Map of Bedford in 1610 99 15. loHN Bunyan preaching in front of the Mote Hall, Bedford, October 18, 1659 (from an old Etching) .... .121 16. Map of the District . . 136 17. Site of the Cottage at Lower Samsell in which Bunyan was arrested .......... 137 18. Haklington House. (As it appeared in the Seventeenth Century) . 141 19. The Chapel of Herne, Bedford 149 20. Bunyan's Chair 231 21. Bunyan's Jua 252 22. Bunyan's Cabinet and Staff 320 23. Pac-simile of Bunyan's Will 352 24. Bunyan's House in St. Cuthbert's, Bedford .... 371 25. The House on Snow Hill in which Bunyan died (from an old Etching) 387 26. Bunyan's Tomb in Bunhill Fields . . .... 396' Bedfobd Town Gaol. From an old Print. I. EARLY OHUECH LIFE IN BEDFORDSHIRE. John Bunyan, born in the English Midlands, may be taken as in some sense a characteristic representative of the region that gave him birth. For the tract of country between the Trent and the Bedfordshire Ouse, which from its northern half gave the Pilgrim Fathers to New England, furnished from its fens and fields in the south a succession of men of his own sturdy independence of thought, and in strong sympathy with his own Puritan faith. In the development of even the most original genius, the environment counts for much ; it may help us,. therefore, to a truer estimate of the man if we first briefly recall the spiritual antecedents of the county in which he was born and in which his life was spent. When the Reformation broke in upon the old ecclesiastical 2 JOEN BUNTAN. [chap i. system of England, Bedfordshire seems to have been more than usually receptive of the new ideas then rising over Europe. Not that the whole county, any more than other counties, was prepared to become Protestant at a stroke. Here, as elsewhere, many Englishmen, after their manner, were inclined to "stand in the ways, and see and ask for the old paths." Leading families, like the Mordaunts of Turvey, remained firm in their allegiance to the ancient faith, and turned their houses into hiding-places for its bishops and priests during the hard days of Elizabeth and James. Not a few of the yeomen also held tenaciously to the old well-worn modes of religious thought, even while diligently attending the services of a Reformed Church. As late as 1579, or more than forty years after England had broken with the See of Rome, farmers like Robert Bony on, of Wingfield, in the parish of Chalgrave, in the wills they made, still commended their souls not only to Almighty God, but also " to our blessed Ladie St. Mary and to all the holy company of heaven." * No wonder, therefore, that Protestant vicars did not always find it easy to carry their slowly moving parishioners with them. It was far on in the reign of Elizabeth, for example, when Peter White, the Minister of Eaton Socon, having reconstructed the rood-loft of his parish church, where anciently stood the rood called Mary and John, had in 1581 to preach and publish a " Godlye and fruitefuU sermon against Idolatrie," to quiet " the consciences of the simple." He found it needful to assure troubled souls among his parishioners that the changes he had made were really very slight. "The Rood-lofte wanteth nothing of his former state, but only the images and uppermost front." The loft itself, "being nine foot in bredth, yet standeth with the beame," only instead of having " the Roode or Idoll," " the Tabernacle that sometimes stood upon the Altar is placed from the beame aforesaid." The rest "remaineth as it did in the time of popery." Even yet they were not altogether reassured, and another pamphlet issued by the vicar the following year, shows that the feeling roused by his Protestant innovations was neither slight nor soon allayed, t Possibly similar clashings of opinion disturbed * Bedfordshire Wills, 1676-9, No. 126. t A Godlye and fruitefuU Sermon against Idolatrie. Preaohed the xv, daye of 1581.] EARLY CHURCH LIFS IN BEDFORDSEIRK 3 other parishes in the county ; and it is tolerably certain that in the hearts of many there was still, from old association, a strong attachment to the religious usages and superstitions of the Church, now no longer the Church of the State. Still, these instances were exceptional. The tradespeople in the towns, as well as a majority of the gentry in the country- houses, were staunchly Protestant, as were also the two great noblemen, the natural chieftains of the county, the Earls of Kent and Bedford. The county, indeed, became a recognised asylum of religious liberty for many from across the sea. Refugees for conscience sake came from Alencon and Valen- ciennes, and settled at Cranfield in 1568, bringing with them their lace pillows, and establishing the lace trade of the district. And while many Protestants from the Netherlands, fleeing from Philip of Spain and the Duke of Alva, thus found a home in the villages of Bedfordshire, introducing names stiU to be recognised in the parish registers, collections were also made in the churches of the county for others still in their own land, and still suffering cruel hardships on account of their faith. Both before the Reformation and for a century after we get what is probably the most realistic view possible to us now, of the ecclesiastical life of the people of England, from a source hitherto comparatively neglected, the "Act-Books" of the Archdeacons' Courts. From the middle of the fifteenth century certainly, and probably much earlier, with the exception of the brief reign of Edward VI., down to the year 1640, when the procedure known as ex officio was abolished, there was kept up a close surveillance of the lives of the people in each parish of each of the deaneries of which the archdeaconry was composed. These Courts, which were regularly held, took cognisance of every conceivable offence against morals as well as against eccle- siastical discipline. The form of procedure was either by Inquisition, when the judge was the accuser; by Accusation, lanuarie, 1581, in the Parrielie Qmrch of Eaton Sooken, witbin the Oountie of Bedf orde, hy P. W., Minister and Preacher in that place. At London Imprinted ty Fraimcis Coldocke, 1581, 8vo. [black letter]. An Ansvveare vnto eertaine crabbed Questions, pretending a real presence of Christ in the Sacramente. Gathered & set foorth by Peter Whyte. London, Imprinted by John Wolfe and Henry Kirkham, 1582. b2 4 JOHN BTJNYAN. [chap. i. wlien some other person made the charge; or by Denuncia- tion, which was simple presentment. The most frequent penalty on conviction was a money fine, but in many cases the culprit had to do penance in a white sheet, or make public confession before a congregation of his neighbours. More serious oflEences were followed by excommunication, a penalty carrying with it social consequences of the gravest kind. For example, from the Act-Books of the Bedford Archdeaconry, we find that in 1617, William Worrall of Kempston was cited before the Court at Ampthill for buying and selling with Thomas Crawley, which he ought not to have done because Thomas Crawley was an excommunicate person. The same year John Glidall, fuller, of Cranfield, and Francis Crashop, were cited and fined, " for setting Richard Barrett, an excommunicate person, a work." Even love must be crossed and courtship forbidden till the Church was reconciled. In 1616 Eoger Perriam, of St. Cuth- berts, Bedford, was cited, " for that there is a report that he doth frequent and keep company with Margarett Bennett, who standeth excommunicate." If an excommunicated person ven- tured to appear aipong his neighbours in the parish church, the minister was compelled to call public attention to his presence, and absolutely stop the service till the proscribed person had left the building. Indeed, the consequences which followed a man through life did not even cease with his death. Robert Baker, the parish clerk of Potton, was punished for burying the body of an excommunicate person in the churchyard ; and some years later Ann& Skevington of Turvey was herself excommunicated because that, in widowed grief, she had been present at the burial of her own husband, who for his noncon- formity had died under the ban of the Church. It lies outside the range of our present purpose, of course, but it would be interesting to show what curious light the records of the various Archdeacons' Courts throw on the morals and manners of our forefathers. A large proportion were cases of intemperance and impurity. Among the ecclesiastical offences were such as refusing to follow the cross in procession, hanging down the head at the elevation of the host, throwing the pax- bread on the ground, separating the holy oil, washing hands in the baptismal font, singing the Litany derisively,, refusing to laoo.] EARLY CHURCH LIFE IN BEDFORDSHIRE. 5 pay dues and keep feast days, reading heretical and English books during the mass, not receiving ashes on Ash Wednesday, and not confessing at Easter. Among offences of a more mis- cellaneous character, we find one man bringing judgment upon himself for " marieing his wife in their parish church in her mask ;" another " for being married to his wife under a bush;" and yet a third, " for that the day he was marry ed he dyd blowe oute the lightes about the altar and wolde suffer no lightes to bourne." One unloving spirit was dealt with " for not treating his wife with afiection ; " another, yet more un- loving, "for cheening his wife to a post and slandering his neighbours." People ofiended by " exercising the magic art," by consulting cunning women, by using private conventicles, and by " hiring foreigners to work at their art." It was an offence also not to " make two torches and keep the drynk- ynge in the parish, according to the laudable use and custom ;" and a shoemaker was punished, for that he "kepeth his bedd upon the Sundaies and other holy days at time of mattens and mass, as it were a hownde that shuld kepe his kenell." One man came into trouble for " folding some sheep in the church during a snow storm ; " and another, for "living in the church- porch, and suffering his wife to travail in childbirth there and to continue there her whole moneth." Women fell under the judgment of the Court for " coming to be churched without kercher, midwife or wyves ; " or not " as other honest women, but comynge in her hatt, and a quarter about her neck ; " or for " not coming in a vaile ; " and one brisk housewife, striking out a bright idea on a rainy day, found to her cost that she had ofiended by " hanginge her lynnen in the church to dry." The law was administered with even-handed justice against the officials of the parish as well as against the common people. The clergy were cited for " not sprinkling holy water on the parishioners," for "letting divers die without howsill or shrifte throw his defaute ; " for " refusing to reply to the archdeacon in the Roman tongue ; " for refusing to hear confessions, " because it grieves hira to heare the confessions made." One rector went quite wrong by " taking upon himself to the scandal of his calling, to be lord of misrule at Christmas among certein yongelinges," and another by leaving some ecclesias- 6 JOHN BUNTAN. [chap. i. tical ceremony to be present at the more exciting spectacle of an execution. The churchwardens incurred penalty by " suf- fering unrulie persons to ring and jingle the bells out of due season," by permitting a minstrel to play in church at a wed- ding, and because the white sheet used for penance was missing. The schoolmaster was fined for teaching children above sixteen years of age without licence, or for "being negligent in his place, his schoUers not profiting under him." And, finally, that chartered libertine, the parish clerk, was dealt with sum- marily, and surely most righteously, " for tbat he singeth the psalmes in the church with such a jesticulous tone and altito- nant voyce, viz. squeaking like a pigg, which doth not only interrupt the other voyces, but is altogether dissonant and dis- agreeing unto any musicall harmonic." * Some of the citations in the Act-Books of the Court of the Archdeaconry of Bedford relate to Puritan scruples on the part of several of the clergy of the county. For example, in 1601, Caesar Walpole, curate of Woburn, and in 1617, William Moore, minister of Sharnbrook, Oliver Roberts, vicar of Gold- ington, and Christopher "Watson, curate of Pertenhall, were cited for "not wearing the surplisse usuallie," or for " wanting a hoode," or for not making the sign of the cross in baptism, or for not reading prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays. It is usually assumed that the Puritan party were the only strict Sabbatarians in the country ; but in Bedfordshire, as a matter of fact, the same court and the same commissary dealing with the ministers just named for Puritanism, enforced also upon the laity the strictest observance of the Sabbath. Within the years 1610 — 1617, Oliver Lenton and Walter Lewin of Bar- ford, were punished for looking on football players on Sundav ; John Hawkes of Renhold, for playing at nineholes; and William Shellie of Bedford, for playing at tables on that day. Roger White of Risely, also was cited for travelling his horses on the Sabbath day ; Robert Kinge of Shelton, " for going towards London on the Sabbath day in winter," and William Dennys of Bedford, " for going out of St. John's Church to Elstowe in sermon tyme." The following persons were also cited: John Tirold of Bedford, for "bringing in his wares on * Hale's Precedents and Proceedings in Criminal Causes, 1457 — 1640. 1617.] EARLY CEURCH LIFE m BEDFORD SHIRK 1 the Sabbath day in praier time ; " John Sharman, for killing meat ; Thomas Styles, for dressing a calf in the open Butcher- rowe, and Peter Lord, the barber of Woburn, for " trimming men" on that day. Saints' days were to be as rigorously observed as Sundays. Three parishioners of Milton Ernys came under the lash of the court : Leonard WUlimot for cart- ing on St. Luke's day ; James Hailey, for winnowing corn on Easter Tuesday ; and Walter Griffin " for putting upp netts and catching larks on a holliday." John Neele of Luton, also found to his cost that he had done wrong in " stocking a fruit tree on All Saints' day," so did Thomas Bigrave of Pavenham, and John West of Stevington, who were " at a foote-ball plaie on Ascension Day, and absent from praiers ; " and Henry Waters of Litlington had to answer at Ampthill " for carry- ing a burthen of woode home from Beckring Park on Easter day last." Among others presented before the court were five parishioners of Poddington, for not receiving the communion thrice a year ; Anna Chandler, of Studham for being " a Brownist ; " the wife of John Wheeler of Cranfield, with others of his neighbours, for not frequenting church ; Richard Reade of Keysoe, for so far anticipating the Quaker, George Fox, by some thirty years as to sit " with his hatt on usually at the reading of the Epistle and Gospell," and William Shackspeare of Odell, for not communicating. It is curious to see the uses to which the churches were sometimes put in the days to which the Act-Books refer. Indeed we are almost startled to find Harman Sheppard, the curate of the parish, presented in 1612, for baiting a bear in the church at Woburn.* Some years later, also, the church- wardens of Knotting were cited because that on three successive Shrove Tuesdays they and their sons and Mr. Alvey, the rector of the parish, " permitted and were present at cockfightings in the chancell of the said church in or about the sacred place where the communion table stands, many persons being there assembled and wagers laid." t In still later years the rector of Carlton was presented because " immediately before service he did lead his horse in at the south doore into the chancell of * Lambeth M8S. Misoell., 952 ; 43. t State Papers, Bom., Chas. I., 1637, vol. ccclxx., 90. 8 JOHN BTINYAN. - [chap. i. Carlton church, where he sett him and there continued all the time of the said service and sermon." Patrons of benefices also, as well as clergy and churchwardens, sometimes dealt with the sacred edifice in remarkably free and easy fashion. An instance of this may be found in a village between Bedford and Northampton, of which in 1641, it was certified that the vicarage had been pulled down, the glebe lost, and the tithes detained, and that the lord of the manor, Jasper Hartnell, after dismantling the body of the church, selling the lead and the bells, had turned the chancel into a kennel for his greyhounds, and the steeple into a dove-house for his pigeons.* The country squires who could so rudely handle the churches would not be over nice in their treatment of the clergy. Jasper Fisher, the rector of Wilden, in his visitation sermon preached at Ampthill in 1635, complained that " the great men do send God's messengers upon their base errands, place them below their serving-men, esteem them below their parasites ; nay, deride and abuse, persecute and destroy them for their mes- sage." t In the same strain speaks out that Shakespeare of the Puritans, as he was called, Thomas Adams, the vicar of Willington. In a Visitation Sermon preached at St. Paul's, in Bedford, in 1612, he asks, " Shall the Papists twit us that our Our Father hath taken from the Church what their Paternoster bestowed upon it ? Were the goods of the Church for this intrusted to gentlemen and lords of the manors, that they should set them to sale and turn their benefits into their own purses ? . . . We are well freed from the Bonners and butchers of Christ's lambs ; but we have still fleecers enough — too many ' — that love to see learning follow Homer with a staff and a wallet. Every gentleman thinks the priest mean, but the priest's means hath made many a gentleman." + The Puritan movement, like the Protestant before it, found a congenial home in Bedfordshire. Thomas Brightman, the vicar of Hawnes, a celebrated preacher and writer in his time, was one of several ministers who, in 1603, waited upon King * A Certificate from Northamptonshire, 4to. London, 1641. t The Frieat's Duty md Dignity, by Jasper Fisher, Presbyter and Rector of Wilden in Bedfordshiie : London, 1636. J Heaven and Earth reconciled: a sermon preached at St. Paul's Church in Bedford, Oct. 3rd, 1612. Adams' Practical "Works, 1862, I., 448, ct seq. 1633.] EARLY CEURCE LIFE IN BEBFORDSHIRE. 9 James, at that time the guest of the Cromwells at Hinchin- brook, near Huntingdon. Speaking for the people from whom they came they " had some good conference with his Majesty and gave him a book of reasons." They pleaded against the use of the sign of the cross in baptism, against baptism by women, and against the use of the cap and surplice. They urged that there ought to be examination into the life of such persons as came to the communion, and that ministers ought not to be called priests. They petitioned against "longsome- ness of service, and the abuse of church songes and music," against profanation of the Lord's Day, and against excommu- nication by such lay persons as the Archdeacon's commissary, or for trifles, and without the consent of pastors.* It need not be repeated here how the Puritans got nothing from King James but this "good conference" at Hinchin- brook. But though disappointed in their hopes from him they held on their way, their opinions obtaining wider and firmer hold among the people. In 1633, the Bishop of Lincoln, reporting the condition of his diocese to Archbishop Laud, observes, " Some in Bedfordshire use to wander from their own parish churches to follow preachers afiected by themselves, of which the officers are caused to take special care." The follow- ing year Laud himself reports to the King : " As for Lincolne, it being the greatest diocese in the kingdom, I have now reduced that under Metropolitical Visitation, and visited it this preceding year. My visitors there found Bedfordshire most tainted of any part of the diocese, and in particular Mr. Bulkeley is sent to the High Commission for Nonconformity." t The first of the two visitors here referred to by the Archbishop was Dr. Farmery, chancellor of the diocese of Lincoln, who in July, 1634, reported to him as follows : " That sort of people that run from their own parishes after afiected preachers are the most troublesome part of the ecclesiastical inquisition in Buckingham and Bedfordshires, where they found great abettors in this their disorder. The new recorder of Bedford questioned at a sessions one of my apparitors for troubling, as * Petition to King James, Nov. 30th, 1604. AMI. MSS. 8978. t Laud's Annual Reports of his Province to the King, 1633, 1634. Lambeth MSS. 943, p. 251. 10 JOHN BUNYAN. [chap. i. he said, these godly men, and then delivered publicly that if men were thus troubled for going to hear a sermon when their minister at home did not preach, it would breed a scab in the kingdom." * It was at this time that Archbishop Laud revived the long disused claim to Metropolitical Visitation, sending his Vicar- General, Sir Nathaniel Brent, to report upon the ecclesiastical condition of the whole of the diocese of Lincoln. The month after Dr. Farmery's report had been received, Sir Nathaniel set forth, beginning at Lincoln and working his way south- ward. He unearthed strange doings and met with curious experiences. Ale-houses, hounds, and swine were kept in churchyards ; copes and vestments had been embezzled ; clan- destine marriages were celebrated by the clergy ; and both clergy and laity were much given to drunkenness. At Saxby, Lord Castleton's bailiff was found melting in the middle aisle of the church the lead he had stripped from the roof. At Brigstock, the Court had to deal with a clergyman who was charged with ensuring an audience to the end of his discourses by the simple expedient of locking the church door upon his congregation, keeping them there till it was quite dark. After this we come upon a different class of offenders. " At Hun- tingdon, divers ministers in that division were suspected for Puritanisme, but being questioned they professed abso- lute conformitie." Brent reached Bedford on the 26th of August, of which he reports : " Mr. Peter Bulkeley, rector of Odell, suspected for Puritanisme, was suspended for absence. He came to me to Aylesburie, where he confessed he never used the surplisse or the crosse in baptisme. He is to appear in the High Commission Court the first court day in November if he reform not before. Divers ministers in Bedford, espe- cially Mr. Smith, are suspected for Nonconformitie." t This Peter Bulkeley thus singled out by the Vicar-General, had succeeded his father, Dr. Edward Bulkeley, as rector of Odell, in 1620. His sister was the wife of Sir Oliver St. John, of Keysoe, and therefore the mother of that Oliver Sc. John, who was afterwards Cromwell's Lord Chief Justice. Educated at * state Papers, Bom., Chas. I., 1634, July 14th. t lUd., 1634, vol. cclxKiv., 12. 1634-5.] EARLY CEURCIC LIFE IN BEDFORDSHIRE. 11 St. John's College, Cambridge, Peter Bulkeley was fellow of his college at an early age, and is spoken of by those who knew him as eminent for scholarship. He was equally eminent for his godly life. Cotton Mather says of him that he was " full of those devotions which accompany a conversation in heaven," and no neighbour could talk with him, but " he would let fall some holy, serious, divine, and useful sentences ere they parted." He was in the full career of his usefulness when silenced by Brent. The summons to the Vicar-General's court reached him, says Mather, "at the time his ministry had a notable success in the conversion of many unto God." Finding after his appearance at Aylesbury he could not, with a good conscience, retain his ministry, he took sorrowful leave of the good people of Odell, and accompanied by Zachary Symmes, minister of the Priory Church of Dunstable, sailed for New England, where he joined the Pilgrim Fathers in 1635. Resting for a time at Boston, he subsequently pursued his way " thro' unknowne woods " to the banks of the Musketaquid river, where he founded the town of Concord, the first inland plantation of the Massa- chusetts colony. It may be interesting to mention that Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord's best known citizen, sprang from Peter Bulkeley, whose granddaughter was married to the Rev. John Emerson in 1665.* While thus dealing with the two Pilgrim Fathers who went from Bedfordshire, Sir Nathaniel Brent still went on his tour of search. From Ampthill, where he was on the 30th of August, he reports to Laud that " great complainte was made of the inconformitie of Mr. Shirley, the vicar of Hawnes, Mr. Holmes, the vicar of Whipsnade, and many others whom I questioned for inconformitie." Of Bow Brickhill, where he was on the 2nd of September, he says : " The people thereabouts, and indeed in all the south part of this diocese, are much addicted to leave their parish churches to go to hear afiected preachers elsewhere. The country much complayneth of the Court at Leyton and those of the Court, of Puritanisme. Much complayning, but no proving." With which words Sir Nathaniel took his leave. * The Bttlheley Family, or the Descendants of the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, by F. W. Chapman. Hartford, Coun., 1876. 12 JOEN BUNYAN. [chap. i. When the Vicar-General was gone the officers of the local Ecclesiastical Courts still zealously carried out the policy of driv- ing conscientious men into those ways of conformity so dear to the ecclesiastical mind. Among the MSS. in the House of Lords, calendared in recent years by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, there are numerous petitions, interesting to the local historian, which throw light on the course steadily pur- sued. In one petition, for example, John James of Olney complains that, though nothing had been proved against him, he had been compelled to pay a fine of £10 towards the build- ing of St. Paul's, in London, the ordinary fees, and £16 to the Court. He had also, he says, to give a beaver to Sir John Lambe, Dean of Arches, " which cost your petitioner £4 more." His own minister being suspended, and no preaching going on in his own parish church, he went to hear a sermon elsewhere, and, though this sermon was preached in a parish church, and not in a conventicle, he was for this offence excommunicated. To obtain absolution from this sentence cost him the ordinary fees and a fine of £24 more. John James has further sorrows to recount, " all which unjust proceedings have caused your petitioner to sell his inheritance, and to spend above £100, and tend greatly to his undoing." * It would seem that many of the clergy fared no better than the laity. Another petition is from Daniel Clarke, vicar of Steventon, and others, and complains that Walter Walker, the commissary of the Court at Bedford, " hath, by virtue of his office, tyrannized over the clergy of sett purpose to ingratiate himself with the Archbishop of Canterburie." In apportioning the tax laid upon the clergy for the King's expedition to Scot- land, he had made excessive assessments, " threatening to sus- pend them, and to return their names if they did not comply." From Clarke he had demanded £5 instead of forty-six shillings, and from Thomas Wells, the rector of Carlton, £6. " This was greatly too much, and because he did not pay he cited Mr. Wells (though a hundred years olde) to Bedford Courte, being five miles from his living ; and because he did not appear he suspended him, and called him an old owle, and would not dis- miss him till he paid the £6." The petition, which was evi- « House of Lords MSS., Fet. 9th, 1640, 1641. Petition of John James. 1641.] EARLY CHURCH LIFE m BEBFORB SHIRE. 13 dently a combined expression of grievances, goes on to describe how " the said commissarie did suspend the curate of Bromham for referring to the Government in his sermon," and did " ex- hibit articles against the rector of Stondon for reading divine service once without a surplice, though it was proved by wit- nesses that at that time his surplice was at the washers ; " how " he suspended the vicar of Cardington for once omitting to weare the surplice in the afternoon, though he had worne it in the morning ; " and how he declared he would make Richard Kifford, the churchwarden of Cockayne Hatley, stand in three market towns barefooted and bareheaded, or pay a fine of £13 6s. 8d., for not presenting that the font was in decay.* In another section the same petition- complains of a change of procedure forced upon the parishioners of St. Paul's, in Bedford, in the manner of observing the Communion of the Lord's Supper. From the time of the Reformation and the abolition of the mass there had been no rails round the com- munion-table. As to whether it was a table or an altar, whether its right place was in the body of the church or chancel, or altarwise at the east end, controversy had been briskly waged. But, practically, a compromise, favourable to the Puritans, had been come to in Elizabeth's time, which was substantially adopted in the canons of 1603. According to this the table should stand in the church where the altar stood before the Reformation, except at the celebration of the Communion, at which time it was to be brought out and placed where the communi- cants could most conveniently see and hear the minister, and then to be returned to its former place when the service was over. The Eighty-Second Canon distinctly enjoins a moveable Communion-table, so that a fixed altar with altar-rails and kneeling communicants thereat were unlawful innovations introduced into the Church of England by Archbishop Laud. In his endeavour to change the practice thus established Laud was met by stout resistance. In 1636 he reported to the King that in Bedfordshire there was great opposition both to the erection of altar-rails and to the kneeling before them. He says, " The people in some places refuse to do so. His lord- * Souse of lords MSS., August 5th, 1641. Petition of Daniel Clarke, vicar of Steventon, &c. 14 JOEN BUNTAN. [chap. i. ship [the Bishop of Lincoln] desires direction, as this is not regulated by any canon of the Church." On the margin of this report there is, in the well-known handwriting of the King, the following note : " 0, R. Try your way for some time." * Immediately after, as the petition referred to complains, the commissary " ordered steppes to be raised at the upper end of the chancel of St. Paul's in Bedford, and gave strict orders that the communion-table be sett there north and south." This was done, yet, in spite thereof, both minister and people still retained the mode of administration to which they had been long accustomed. The petition then relates, that in 1639 Walter Walker " gave orders to John Bradshaw, vicar of St. Paul's in Bedford, to keep within the railes at the administration of the communion, and because he did not, but came down to the communicants, he complained against him. He gave orders to the communicants of St. Paul's to come up to the railes about the communion-table, and first went up thither himself to show them how. Those that failed he cited, and threatened to make them make public confession in the church." t The commissary was a resolute man, but the men with whom he had to deal were resolute also. A year later, in October, ] 640, the vicar of St. Paul's was cited before the High Com- mission Court, and asked plain questions as to his mode of administering the communion. He replied that he knew of no canon forbidding him to administer the sacrament to them that did not come up to the rails. + In this attitude he was sustained by his leading parishioners, among whom were John Eston, his churchwarden of the previous year, John Grewe, and Anthony Harrington, three men whom we shall meet with again as the founders of the church to which Bunyan afterwards belonged. What the Court of High Commission did with John Brad- shaw there remain no records to show. For before long both, that court and those who inspired its proceedings had more urgent duty on their hands than that of looking after him. A storm was gathering, before the fury of which great heads were soon to bend low, and within a few months there was * Laud's Eeports to the King, 1636. Lambeth MSS., 943, p. 267. t Souse of Lords MSS., Aug. 5th, 1641. X State Papers, Bom., Chailes I., Oct. 7th, 1640, vol. occcbcix., 52. 1641.] EARLY CEURCE LIFE IN BEDFORDSHIRE. 15 summoned that Long Parliament which was to change so many- things before its work was done. To this ever-memorable assembly Bedfordshire sent up three parliamentarians, Sir Beauchamp St. John of Bletsoe, Sir Oliver Luke, and his son. Sir Samuel of Cople Wood End, and the royalist Lord Went- worth of Todyngton. Within a month Lord Wentworth was raised to the Upper House in his own right, and Sir John Bur- goyne, a parliamentarian, took his place. By this change the county in its representation came to be wholly on the side of Pym and Hampden in the impending struggle. The feeling of the time was electric, both as to hopes and fears. Parliament met in November, and in January thoSe of " the nobility, knights, gentrie, ministers, freeholders, and inhabi- tants of the county of Bedford " who were for Laud and the King sent up a petition desiring to " manifest their affection to the Book of Common Prayer, which was with such care and sinceritie refined from the dross of Romish intermixture, with so much pietie reduced to its present purity ; " and they pray that the present form of Church government may be continued, and the statutes concerning offenders against the same be put into execution.* Parliament received this petition, but not with the same sympathetic attention they bestowed upon another document sent up from Bedfordshire on the 13th of the same month. This was a petition and articles from John Harvey of Carding- ton against Dr. Pocklington, rector of Yelden, "as a chiefe author and ringleader in all those innovations which have of late flowed into the Church of England." Hugh Reeve also, of Ampthill, another Bedfordshire clergyman of like proclivities, was ordered to be arrested by the Sergeant-at-Arms for his popish practices, and in the early months of 1641 petitions from aggrieved parishioners went up from all sides, like leaves before the storm. Nor did the men of Bedfordshire content themselves with seeking redress of local and private wrongs. On Tuesday, the 16th of March, a petition was presented to Parliament by Sir John Burgoyne, who was accompanied by some two thousand persons, " the high sheriff, knights, esquires, gentlemen, ministers, freeholders, and others, inhabitants of the county of * State Papers, Bom., Charles I., 1640, 1641 [Jan.], No. 110. ^ 16 JOHN BUNYAN. [chap. i. Bedford." They first express their gratitude to Parliament for what in so short a space had already been accomplished ; for the pious care which had removed scandalous and super- stitious innovations in religion ; for the reassembling of Parlia- ment, the removal of illegal taxes ; for the abolition of the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission, and for the tak- ing away of bishops' votes in Parliament. With an obvious reference to Strafibrd and Laud, who were then in the Tower awaiting their trial, the petition asks for the displacement of all evil councillors and the punishment of all delinquents, and for the complete removal of all burdensome and scandalous ceremonies, and of all corrupt and scandalous ministers. They desire also that a learned, pious, and conscientious ministry may be pro- vided for and maintained, especially in market towns and populous places ; that the pious and painful divines who for unjust and frivolous causes had been deprived by the bishops and their officers, might receive ample reparation, and that there might be "a faithfuU magistraoie as well as a painfull ministrie." * Such was the tenor of the petition subscribed so numerously and presented to Parliament so impressively by the people of Bedfordshire. In the then prevailing temper of the House of Commons, both the petition and the demonstration were right welcome at Westminster. It was ordered that Mr. Speaker, in the name of the House, shall take particular notice, and give the gentlemen of Bedfordshire thanks for their petition. It was no ordinary occasion, no common display of the feeling of the country, and even London was stirred at the sight. For these men from the Midlands rode four abreast through the city on their way to Westminster. " I myself," says Nehemiah Wallington, " did see above two thousand of these men come riding from Finsbury Fields, four in a rank, with their protes- tations in their hats." t * Broadside, Printed by a true copy with the petitioners' approhation, at the charge of John Chambers, 1641. t Sistorical Notices, II. 31. ELSTOW AND THE BUNYANS OF ELSTOW. If, as is not improbable, any considerable portion of the two thousand petitioners from Bedfordshire started from the county- town, Bunyan, who was then a lad of twelve, may have stood and with wistful eyes watched this significant cavalcade as it passed through his native village, along the main street of which then lay the high road to London. Elstow, a little more than a mile to the south-west of Bedford, is a quaint, quietly nestling place, with an old-world look upon it, scarcely touched by the movements of our modern life. Fronting 18 JOHN BUNYAN. [chap. ii. the road-side, with overhanging storeys and gabled dormers, are half-timbered cottages, some of which, judging from the oaken rafters and staircases of their interiors, have seen better days. The long building in the centre of the village, and now turned into cottages, with projecting upper chambers and central overhanging gateway, stiU retains much of the external appearance it presented as a hostelry for pilgrims in pre- Reformation times. Opposite to the gate of this hostelry is the opening to the village green, on the north side of which stands what we may call the Moot Hall of the parish, a pic- turesque building of timber and brick, which, with its oaken beams bearing traces of Perpendicular carving and its ruddy tiles touched here and there with many-tinted lichen, presents to the eye in the summer sun-light a pleasant combination of colour and form. ' This curious structure of fifteenth century work, furnishing a somewhat fine example of the domestic architecture of the period, was probably originally erected to serve as the hospitium for travellers, and while not far from the road was yet within the hallium or outer court of Elstow Abbey.* At a later time, when the manorial rights passed from the Abbess to the Crown, there were held in the upper chamber those courts of the lord of the manor with Tiew of Frankpledge, of which Bunyan's ancestors had some experience in the century before his birth. It was the scene, also, of village festivities, statute hirings, and all the public occasions of village life. To the west of this building, on what was probably once the centre of a much larger green, rises the pedestal and broken stem of the ancient market cross round which were held those famous fairs of Elstow, possible suggestions of Vanity Fair, which had been a great village institution ever since the days of Henry II. It was on the green sward stretching this way and that round the cross that Bunyan played his Sunday games and heard those mysterious voices which changed for him the current of his life. The elm-trees by the churchyard wall have, for safety's sake, been shorn of their upper branches, and the Church, of stern necessity, but with loving, heedful care, has been extensively * Architectural Notes, by M. J. C. Buckley, 1885. 1641.] ELSTOW AND TEE BTJNYAN8 OF ELSTOW. 19 restored; but tlie church tower, standing some seven yards apart from the main building, like the similar towers of Blyth, Shrewsbury and Christ Church, remains the same as when Bunyan leaned against its doorway and delighted to ring the bells in the chamber overhead. The massive buttresses, the West View op Elstow Chvkgh. time-worn oaken door, " the roughly paved floor trodden with the hob-nailed boots of generations of ringers," the very bells themselves are unchanged by the two hundred years which have come and gone since he was there. Passing through the church, or round it, on the south side we come upon a park-like meadow, with its handsome trees and colony of rooks, once part of the monastic enclosure; 20 JOHN BTTNYAN. [chap. ir. upon the deligHtfol little cliamber, with its groined roof and centnd piUar of Pnrbeck marble, eometinies, though erroneously, called the chapter house, sometimes the nnns' choir, bntthe actual use of which, standing as it does west of the church, it is not so easy to determine. We come also upon the fish ponds of the abbey, now choked with weeds, and upon the old mansion of the Hillersdons, whose stately doorway, and mined waUs, and mnllioned windows strong shoots of ivy have covered with a mantle of green. Elstow, or Helenstow, the «tow or stockaded place of St. Helen, a name cognate to such forms as Bridestow and Mor- wenstow, was so called because of the dedication of the old Saxon church to Helena, the mother of Constantino the Great. In 1078 there was founded in the place, by Judith, the niece of the Conqueror, a Benedictine nunnery, which remained the central feature of Elstow life till the surrender of the monasteries at the Reformation. In lo-33 a grant was made by tiie Crown to Sir Humphrey Badcliffe, of " the whole demesne and site of the late Monastery or Abbey of Elenstowe, in our County of Bedford, dissolved." And while the abbey with its surroundings was thus handed over to the grantee, the church was dismantled, the materials being probably used in the construction of the mansion-house hard by ; the nave was shortened by two bays; the central tower beyond, and the transepts, chancel, and Lady Chapel were taken down; a beauti- ful Xorman doorway was remored from the east end, to form the present north-west entrance ; and the church tower now standing by itself was constructed to hold die bells, which had been removed from the central tower. Sir Humphrey RadclifTe died in 1566, his widow surviving him at Elstow till 1594. In 1616 his son. Sir Edward, sold the Hstow estate to Sir Thomas HiUersdon, who, in the davs of James I., built at least a part of the house now in ruins to the south-west of the church. The HiUersdon arms are to be seen over the very graceful porch, which is in the best style of the English Benaissance. Of this part of the building Mr. Buckley says : — " The harmony of its proportions and the grace of its details show this little edifice to have been the wurk of a master hand ; in the masques atd arabesques lOJO/ JCLHT'jW AND TUE bUSYANH OJ- ELSTOir. 21 which decora-ta i\n: mlradoK of the arch, a« well as the panels i/i the p«9duiient« of tbo ^^HiusteTn, are traces of Italian taste ; and from th'; general i»tyle of th*; work there sseemis every reason U> believe that Lugo Jon^ planned and added this elegant porch U> the old mnaor-httam." * Standing back a little way fr'/wi the high road, its carriage-drive hading np to this finely sculptured entrance, the manor-hrjuse was at its best in Bnnyan'e Elstow days, aiul may have suggested to him the conception of that " very stately palace the name of which was Beautiful, which stood just ty the highway side." Turning now from the surroundings of Bunyan's native village to his family antecedents, we find that his ancestors were in Bedfordshire as early at least as liyt>. From the feet that in 1219 the form of the name was Buignon, really an old • AreMUetttral yiitm, p. 200. In mpport of tho oyinUm here expremsd, it may he wimivrjuA that Inij^ C^y^t^r*^ O^TZ^f*^ Thomas the Sonne op Thomas Bi REGISTER OF THE BAPTISM .>,|^V^W^.'*/^^^H^^ A%W^^^ '^ Margaret Bentley daughter of Wm. Bent REGISTER OF THE MARRIAGI Thomas Bonnionn Junk and Margaret Bentlev REGISTER OF BUN' John the Sonne of Thomas Be W TRANSCRIPT REGISTERS. BUNYAN'S FATHER, 1603. Z^ii^S^STJj^ 'Z^T^^J^^cv^^^f^-i^^ THE 24th daye op Februaky. BUNYAN'S MOTHER, 1603. 'k-nad^ -6^- ^1^-^^** c/i^*y^&m£ ^^r- fAS C[heisteneb] the 13th op Novemebk. )' BUNYAN'S PARENTS, 1627. E MARKIED THE THREE AND TWENTIETH OF MAY. S BAPTISM, 1628. N JUNB THE 30 OF NOVEMBR. 62'?.] EL8T0W AND THE BUNYANS OF EL8T0W. 33 presence of Henry Latham and Walter Cooper, and was proved before Walter Walker on the 14th of December, 1641. Thomas Bonyon, the son of this man and the father of John, was first married to Anne Pinney, at Elstow Church, on the 10th of January, 1623, when he was in his twentieth year. In 1627 Anne died, and so far as the register shows, died childless. The same year he came again to Elstow Church to be married, this time to the wife who was to be the mother of his illustrious son. As we did not, till the recent search among the Tran- script Registers, know the maiden name of the mother of the Dreamer, it may be well to give the entry in full, which is as follows : — 1627. " Thomas Bonnionn, Junr., and Margaret Bentley were married the three and twentieth of May." We ^ho, in the course of modern thought, have come to attach so much importance to hereditary transmission, would have been glad to know more than we do of the character and personality of the parents of one who occupies so prominent a place in English literature, and who was so unmistakably a child of genius. Unfortunately, their son, while telling so much about his own inward experiences, tells us but little concerning his father and mother. Even the little he does tell seems as if it ought to be qualified. When we remember that the wills of his father and grandfather, and of his maternal grandmother have been preserved in the Registry of the District Court of Probate from a time when the poorest of the poor never made any wills at all, and that the house in which he was born had been the property of his ancestors from time immemorial, it would seem as if Bunyan in his humility had depreciated the social position of his fainily more than he had need. He says, " For my descent then, it was, as is well known by many, of a low and inconsiderable generation, my father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families in the land." That these expressions ought not to carry the full force they carry to-day is shown by the fact he proceeds to state. "But yet, notwithstanding the meanness and incon- siderableness of my parents, it pleased God to put it into their hearts to put me to school to learn both to read and write, the 34 JOBN BVNYAN. [chap. n. which I also attained according to the rate of other poor men's children." Still, when all fair deductions are made, Bunyan's parents were poor enough no doubt, and the struggle of life with them keen enough. It need scarcely be said, however^ that he was not the man to give forth unmanly wailings about the lowliness of his position or the hardships of his. lot. In his own hearty religious fashion he sums up the question by saying : " Though I have not here, as others, to boast of noble blood or of a high-born state according to the flesh, all things considered I magnify the heavenly Majesty for that by this door he brought me into this world, to partake of the grace and life that is in Christ by the Gospel." Thomas Bunyan, his father, usually spoken of as a tinker, described himself in his will as a " braseyer." * Working at his forge by the cottage in the fields, repairing the tools and utensils of his neighbours at Elstow or Harrowden, or wandering for the purposes of his trade from one lonely farmhouse to another, he would be neither better nor worse than the rest of the craftsmen of the hammer and the forge. We may perhaps regard this tinker of Elstow as the counterpart of the tinker of Turvey, a well-known character of those times, who lived some half-dozen miles away across the fields, and who is supposed, in the year of grace 1630, to have "hammered out an epistle to all strolling Tinckers and all brave mettle-men that travel on the Hoofe." In this production of his he boasts of the country he has be- stridden, the towns he has traversed, and of the fairs in which he has been drtink. He claims that " all music first came from the hammer/' that " the tincker is a rare fellow," for that " he is a schoUer and was of Brazen-nose Colledge in Oxford, an excellent carpenter, for he builded Coppersmith's Hall." t Thomas Bunyan may not have been to' the fidl the roystering blade this brother " mettle-man " was, but in the course of his rounds he woidd meet with him and the like of him, and under the trees of the village green or on the settle of the village inn could probably tell as good a story and perhaps drink as deep. * In the books of the Norwich Freemen the "hrasyera " included pewterers, plomers, and belyaters, or bell-founders. — Rye's History of Norfolk. 1885. t The Tinker of Turvey, or Canterhury Tales, London, 1630. Edited by J. 0. Halliwell, F.R.S. 1632.] ELSTOW AND TEE BUNTANS OF EL8T0W 35 Margaret Bunyan, the tinker's wife, and the Dreamer's mother, like her husband, was a native of Elstow, being born there in the same year in which he was born, as the following entry from the Transcript Register shows : — 1603. "Margarett Bentley, daughter of Wm. Bentley, was C. [christened] the xiij° of November." Though her parents, William Bentley and Mary Goodwin were married, in 1601, at St. Paul's Church, in Bedford, we may infer that since Mary Bentley, her grandmother, died in Elstow, as a widow, in 1613, the Bentleys, like the Bvmyans, had been long resident in the parish. Their names do not occur in the Court Roll of Elstow between 1542 and 1550, but are found in the earliest Transcript Register. In any case, as they were both born in Elstow in the same year, Margaret Bentley had known Thomas Bunyan all her life, when in 1627, at the age of twenty-four, she was married to him in Elstow Church, her sister Rose being also married to his brother Edward the following year. Her mother died as a widow in 1632, though in what year her father died the register omits to state. Her mother's will, drawn up in the neat, scholarly handwriting of John Kellie, the vicar of Elstow, giving as it does some idea of the social condition of John Bunyan's mother before her marriage, as well as a Dutch-Hke picture of an Elstow cottage interior of two hundred and fifty years ago, may in part at least be worth recording. It was on the 27th of June, 1632, that " Mary Bentley, of Elnestoe in the countie of Bedford, widow," after bequeathing her soul to Almighty God her Maker in whom she hopes to be saved through Jesus Christ her Saviour, and her body to be buried in the churchyard at Elnestoe, goes on to say : " Item I give and bequeath to John Bentley my sonne one brasse pott, one little table and all the painted cloaths about' the house and the standing Bed in the loft. Item I give to my daughter Mar- garet the joined stoole in the chamber and my little case. Item I give to my daughter Rosse the Joined forme in the chamber and a Hogshead and the dumbe flake. Item I give to my daughter Elizabeth the lesser kettle and the biggest plater, a flaxen sheet and a flaxen pillowbere, a trumell bed and a , d2 30 JOHN BJJNYAN. [chap. n. coffer in the chamber and the table shpet. Item I give to my daughter Anie my best hatt, my best cuffe, my gowne, my best petticoate, the presse in the chamber, the best boulster and blankett, the coffe above, the skillet and a pewter platter, and the other trummle bed, a harder sheet and a pillowbere." All else she gives and bequeaths to her daughter Mary, whom she makes sole executrix, and whom she charges to see her "honestly buried" and her " buriaU discharged." The will was attested by John Kellie, the vicar of Elstow, and Margerie Jaques, a widow, and was proved in the October following. The cottage equipments, and the way they are described, seem to indicate that Margaret Bunyan came not of the very squalid poor, but of people who, though humble in station, were yet decent and worthy in their ways, and took an honourable pride in the simple belongings of their village home. Scanty as are the references which Bunyan makes to his father, those to his mother are scantier still. This may arise partly from the fact that she died before he reached the age of sixteen^ and his remembrance of her may have been dim and distant when two and twenty years later he wrote that story of his life which we find in the " Grace Abounding." It is of course useless to speculate much where we know so little, yet we are tempted to think that the mother of a child so much above the common kind must herself have been a woman of more than common power. "We should not be surprised to be told that she was one of those strongly-marked personalities sometimes met with in English village life — a woman of racy, ready wit, and of picturesque power of expression, who, Mrs. Poyser-like, had a very distinct individuality of her own, and the capacity of making a very distinct impression upon those around her. Unfortunately to us she is little more than a name, and we recall her for a moment from the nameless crowd and from the midst of her " homely joys and destiny obscure " because of the one great event of her life, the birth of her distinguished son, her first-bom. The record of that event quietly takes its place in the list of the nineteen christenings.of ■ that year, at Elstow Church, in the following form : — 1628. " John the sonne of Thomas Bonnionn, Junr. the 30th of Novemb." 1628.] ELSTOW ANB THU BJJNTANS OF ELSTOW. 37 The return ig signed by John Kellie, minister, and Anthony Manley and William AUerson, churchwardens. The entry is commonplace enough, and made in the same routine fashion as were hundreds more, yet as we read, the record becomes more than usually suggestive of the simple beginnings of a great. Elstow Church prom the Fishponds. strong Hfe. Once again we seem to see the wondrous babe carried on that last of the chill days of the November of 1628 to Elstow Church. Rude was the little cradle out of which he was lifted, and common-place the cottage, with its grimy forge, out of which he was carried. Looking at all his unpromising surroundings, there comes into our minds a rustic story told about the father of this child by quaint old Thomas Archer, the rector of Houghton Conquest, parish next neighbour to Elstow itself. The delightful old man kept a sort 38 JOHN BJJNYAN. [chap. ii. of ehronieon miraUle of the little rural world in which, king's chaplain as he was, his tranquil days were spent, and in his record, as a curiosity of natural history, he sets down this ; " Memorandum. — That in Anno 1625 one Bonion of Elsto clyminge of Rookes neasts in the Bery wood ffound 3 Bookes in a nest, all white as milke and not a blacke fether on them." Vividly the whole scene comes back to us. This " Bonion of Elsto," the father of the Dreamer, wandering in vacant mood in the Ellensbury Wood, looks and wonders at the three milk-white birds in the black rook's nest. And as we watch him, the surprise on his face becomes symbol and presage of a wider world's wonder than his, the wonder with which men find in the rude nest of his own tinker's cottage a child all lustrous with the gifts of genius, a life memorable in the literature of the great world stretching far away beyond Elstow Green, and memorable, too, in the spiritual history and experience of many souls in many nations through the centuries to come. in. THE CIVIL WARS. The cottage at Bunyan's End in which Bunyan was born has long since disappeared. Portions of it were still remaining at the close of last century, but the site was shortly after ploughed up, and, with the nine acres of land once belonging to it, was added to the neighbouring farm. It stood at the foot of a gently sloping hiU, and between two streams which, after enclosing " the furlong called Pesselynton," met a little farther on in the hamlet of Harrowden. One of these streams flowed close past the cottage, and after heavy rains turned the field behind, as the land still shows, into a veritable Slough of Despond, into which whosoever wandered stuck fast in miry perplexity. Thomas Bunyan's family, living only a few yards within the Elstow parish boundary, were almost as near to Bedford town as to Elstow Church, the spire of St. Paul's seen through the elm-trees from the top of the grassy slope to the south, being only about a mile away, A bridle-road from Wilstead through Medbury, passing near the front of the icottage, took the line of the willow-trees still to be seen in the hedgerow and joining the main road at the leper house of St. Leonard, went into the town by the ancient hospital of St. John. If Bunyan was sent to Bedford to school rather than to Elstow village, this would be the path he took. In the " Scriptural Poems," published as his in his collected works,* there are these lines : — " For I'm no poet, nor a poet's son. But a mechanic guided by no rule But what I gained in a grammar school, In my minority." If these lines were really Bunyan's own, they would settle the * Offer's Edition, 1862, II., 390. 40 JOHN BUNYAN. [chap. m. point that lie was educated at Bedford on the foundation of Sir William Harpur ; but, to say the least, their genuineness is very doubtful. No one seems to have heard of these poems till twelve years after Bunyan's death. Charles Doe, who saw in the possession of his eldest son John, all the unprinted MSS. Bunyan left behind him, makes no mention of them either in the catalogue of 1692, or in the one still more carefully drawn up in 1698. And when we look at the poems themselves there is certainly but little to remind us of Bunyan's special vein. It may readily be granted that his attempts at poetry do not show him at his best, that his muse " is clad in russet, wears shoes and stockings, has a country accent, and walks along the level Bedfordshire roads," yet even in his rudest rhymes there is pith and power, occasionally a dash of genius, and a certain sparkle of soul nowhere to be found in these " Scriptural Poems " set forth under his name for the first time in 1700.* The line about the grammar school, therefore, must be counted for little. That he did go to school, however, Bunyan tells us himself. Poor as his parents were, " it pleased God to put it into their hearts to put me to school to learn both to read and write." The scholarship thus acquired was of course of the slenderest, " according to the rate of other poor men's chil- dren," and the little he learned was soon lost, " even almost utterly." If he went to Elstow, school inspectors had not yet • Scrvptwral Poems, &c,, by John Bunyan. London, printed for J. Blare, at the Looking Glaas on London Bridge, 1700. The doubtfulness of this work is increased by the name of the publisher. As early as 1688, Blare had published in Bunyan's name a spurious book entitled The Saints' Triumph. In 1705 also he issued a shameless book under the title of The Progress of the Christian Pilgrim, which was the Pilgrim's Progress merely latinized, but on the title page of which there was no mention of Bunyan's name. The veil under which the book was disguised was the most transparent possible : Christian became Christianus ; PUable, Easie ; Worldly Wiseman, Politick Worldly ; and so on. This man who carried on the business at the " Looking Glass " on London Bridge, was a repeated offender against the laws of honest dealing, and he is almost certainly one of the men to whom Nathaniel Ponder referred in 1688, when on the reverse of the title of Bunyan's One Thing is Needful, he printed the following : "Advertisement — This author having published many books which have gone off very well : there are certain ballad-sellers about Newgate and on London Bridge, who have put the two first letters of this author's name and his effigies to their rimes and ridiculous books, suggesting to the world as if they were his." 1644.] TEE CIVIL WARS. 41 risen above the village horizon, and even the endowed founda-: tions in the neighbourhood had fallen upon evil days. The Free School of Sir Francis Clarke, in the neighbouring parish of Houghton Conquest, had its master, Christopher Hills, dis- placed by the master and fellows of Sidney Sussex CoUege, in 1645, "for his wilful neglect and forsaking of the schools contrary to our trust reposed in him." * And the then modest foundation of Sir William Harpur at Bedford in those days fared no better. A petition referring to the time when Bunyan was between nine and twelve years of age complains that WilHam Varney, the schoolmaster, had not only charged fees which he had no right to do, but had also " grossly neglected the school by frequent absence from it, by night-walking and mis- spending his time in taverns and ale-houses, and is also very cruel when present to the boys." f In any case, school-days were few, if not evil, for the tinker's son. The education he received was mainly that given in the great school of human life where so many other sturdy natures have received such effective training. " I never went to school to Aristotle or Plato," says he, "but was brought up at my father's house in a very mean condition, among a company of poor countrymen." In the cottage by the stream bread-eaters ^ must as soon as possible become bread-winners, and Bunyan passed quickly enough from the bench of his master to the forge of his father, necessity, if not choice, indicating that he must be a " braseyer " too. The growing lad had been at work some time when there came to him, in his sixteenth year, the first great sorrow of his life; for in the June days of 1644 his mother sickened and died, and within another month his sister Margaret also, the play- mate of his childhood, was carried across the fields to the same quiet grave in Elstow Churchyard. Nor was this all. Before yet another month had gone by over this twice-opened grave, his father had brought home another wife to take the vacant place. This indignity to his mother's memory, which the lad was old enough to understand and affectionate enough keenly to resent, must have estranged him from his father and his home. The removal of the gentler influence of mother and * Hm-l. MSS., 4115, 79. t Souse of Lords MSS. 42 JOHN BUNTAN. . [chap. m. sister at the formative period of life, and the revulsion of feel- ing created by the indecent haste with which his father married again, may have had not a little to do with those wild and wilful ways of the next few years, \Fhich he lived to describe so vividly and to repent so bitterly. It was probably about six or eight months after his mother's death that Bunyan entered the Army, and had those experiences of a soldier's life to which he makes brief reference in the " Grace Abounding." Earlier it could not have been, for it was not till November, 1644, that he had reached the then Army regulation age of sixteen. And it is not probable that his military life was prolonged beyond a few laonths ; for in the month of June, 1645, the battle of Naseby practically ended the first Civil War, leaving only the fag end to wear itself out in the West. The side on which Bunyan was arrayed in the great civil conflict of the seventeenth century. Parliamentarian or Royalist, has long been matter of dispute. Lord Macaulay says that " he enlisted in the Parliamentary army, and served during the decisive campaign of 1645." The reason for this opinion is probably given in the further statement that " his Greiatheart, his Captain Boanerges, and his Captain Credence are evidently portraits, of which originals were among those martial saints who fought and expounded in Fairfax's army."* On the other hand, Mr. Froude says that " probability is on the side of his having been with the Royalists," giving as the reason for this opinion that his father was of " the national religion," and that John Gifford, the minister at Bedford, had been a Royalist.f Whatever weight may be attached to his father's sympathies — and there is no doubt about these, for he had a son christened Charles on the 30th of May, 1645 — the reference to Gifibrd is out of all historical perspective. Certainly his opinions can have had very little to do with the side Bunyan took in the Civil Wars, seeing that Gifford did not become minister at Bedford till 1650, and that these two men did not even know of each other's existence till years after the Civil Wars were over. Perhaps a brief consideration of the course of events in Bedfordshire during those days of storm and stress may help us to a probable conclusion on the point at issue, and * Biographies, ^•$. 30, 31. t English Men of Letters. Bunyan. p. 12. 1645.] THE CIVIL WARS. 43 at the same time serve to make more vivid the surroundings of Bunyan's life. There is no doubt as to the side which Bedfordshire took as a county. With the shires of Huntingdon, Cam- bridge, Herts, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, it formed the Associated Counties from which Parliament drew its main strength and supplies. Clarendon says that the king had not in Bedfordshire " any visible party, nor one fixed quarter." There were several Royalists in the county, of course, but they do not seem to have been sufficiently numerous to organize themselves into anything like effective shape. The Earl of Cleaveland, of Toddington, spent life and fortune iu the King's service, but chiefly with the Royal forces at a distance. William Gery of Bushmeade raised a troop of horse in the county of Huntingdon, and his brother George was with the King, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Naseby; the two brothers, William and Richard Taylor of Clapham, also were in active service, and surrendered as prisoners of war, the one at Nantwich and the other at Truro. Among those who joined the king at Oxford and surrendered under the Articles when the city was taken, were Henry, Earl of Peterborough, of Turvey, who was a minor and who after- wards withdrew to France; Spencer Potts of Chalgrave : Thomas Joyce, the vicar of Hawnes ; Sir Francis Crawley of Luton ; Edward Russell, the brother of the Earl of Bedford ; Sir William Palmer of Warden, and the widow and son of John Wingate of Harlington. Besides those who surrendered at Oxford, other Bedfordshire Royalists took up arms, though it is not known in what engagements, if any, they took part. Of these, Sir Peter Osborn of Chicksand went beyond seas to escape the consequences of his delinquency ; Richard Conquest of Houghton Conquest was a prisoner in the King's Bench ; Robert Spencer, also, of Eaton Socon, was for some time a prisoner of war. Besides these, there were Robert Audley of Northill, a youth of seventeen ; Michael Grigg of Dunstable ; John Russell, a younger brother of the Earl of Bedford ; Thomas Foster, a yeoman of Elstow, and Richard Cooke of Cranfield. With the exception of those who were excused under 44 JOEN BUNTAK [chap. iii. the Articles of Oxford, the Royalists who remained in the county made their submission to Parliament, took the Solemn League and CoTenant and the Negative Oath, and com- pounded for their estates at Goldsmiths' Hall. Among those who thus compounded were several who, though they did not take up arms, in some way or other declared their sympathies. These were Lord Capelle of Warden ; Sir George Bynnion of Eaton Socon ; Sir Edward Ashton of Wymington ; Sir Thomas Leigh of Leighton ; Sir Robert Napier of Luton ; Charles Ventriss of SheflFord ; Sir John Huet of Thurley ; Sir Lodovick Dier of Colmworth ; Charles Upton of Tempsford ; Humphrey Freemonger of Stanbridge ; Mr. Simley of Wootton ; Mr. Watson of Ampthill ; Mr. Yarway, and Mr. Browne of Kempston ; and Owen Brett of Southill. Some of these com- pounded at one-tenth of the value of their estates, and others at one-sixth. The annual value of the sequestrations in houses, lands, and woods in the town and county of Bedford was £11,700. The entire amount sent up by the sequestrators of the county to the public treasurer at Guildhall between 1644 and 1647 was £9,659 3s. 8d. Of this a very small portion indeed came from the town of Bedford, which appears to have gone almost entirely one way. In 1648, Francis Bannister, the mayor, writes oflScially : — " We have not had any seques- tered in our Towne but a Barber, and little could be had from him ; and two little prebends, yielding £13 6s. Od." * By far the most resolute and conspicuous Royalist in Bed- fordshire was Sir Lewis Dyve of Bromham. Whatever organization there may have been, centred in him ; but in * The authorities for the details here given are (1) The Royalist Composition Papers — Bedfordshire, in the Record Office, and (2) The Original Accounts of Estates of Delinquents seized by Parliament, in the British Museum — Addl. MSS., 5494, Beds., Nos. 1 — 27. It may be well to say that the Royalist Composition Peters are in two series. The First Series consists of 7,300 sets of papers bound in 113 vols, folio, arranged in counties and comprising the corre- spondence and orders of the commissioners for sequestration and sale. The Second Series contains 3,034 sets of papers, and is bound in 54 vols, folio. This series not being arranged in counties is more difficult to search, but for purposes of local history is especially valuable as containing original particulars given in on oath of the estates and personal property of those Royalists who were per- mitted to compound on payment of fine, with the amount of fine. Cf. Selby's Lancashire and Cheshire Records, Record Society, 1882. 1645.] TEE CIVIL WARS. 45 July, 1642, he had to flee for his life, narrowly escaping arrest by swimming the Ouse where it flows past Bromham Hall. The following year he was defeated at Newport Pagnel, after which he appears to have abandoned all farther hope of success in Bedfordshire, and proceeded to active service with the main body of the Royal forces in the west. The great military leader in the county on the other side, against Sir Lewis Dyve, was Sir Samuel Luke of Cople Wood End, who was a tower of strength for what he called " the good old cause." He was one of the Members for Bedford in the Long Parliament, scout-master to the Army, and governor of the garrison of Newport Pagnel. He is said to have been the original of Butler's "Hudibras" and the special object of his satire If this be so, the picture there given of Sir Samuel will scarcely be accepted as a picture from the life by those who have gathered their impressions of this knight of Cople from his own Letter Book during the three years he was governor of Newport. This consists of four MS. volumes* and con- tains letters to him from Cromwell, Fairfax, and other great leaders and officials of the Government, and from him to them and also to his father. Sir Oliver Luke, to his son and his son's tutor, to his neighbours in the county, to his brother officers and others. In all these he leaves the impression upon us of a man of shrewd observation, of unquestionable valour, of godly life, and, what we should not have gathered from Butler's caricature, of considerable breadth of humour and human- ness. He is certainly far from conforming to the conventional idea of a narrow and ascetic Puritan. We find him writing to his son at Geneva, where he is travelling with his tutor, and while urging him to keep the fear of God before his eyes, he wishes him to " strive to perfect his Italian hand, to follow his mathematics, fEencing, vaulting and exercise both of Picke and musket." Writing to Pelham Moore, one of the Secretaries of State, he is not too much concerned about war supplies to forget to ask, "If there bee any new wynes come over y* are excellent good pray send mee down a Teirce or two half hogs- heads upon y® lees of best Claritt." The wine was sent, but not the war supplies, and Sir Samuel rallies " fibrgetful Mr. Moore" * Egertm MSS., 785, 786, 787. Ashhwnham MS8. Stowe Collection, 229. 46 JOEN BUNTAN, [chap. m. upon the long time he is in sending him the needful " shovells, spades, mattockes, Iron Crowes, Drums, Cullers and Halberds," and thinks he must be " a kinn or some greate acquaintance of that Sir Thomas Bayers who wore his Cloaths five yeare in his head before bee putt them to the making." He adds : " Your Claritt wine is starke naught both in the eye and mouth." Therefore Mr. Moore, who has just come away from the pre- sence of Cromwell, whom he has left " well and merry," tells his friend : " Coming thence by Boate I saw a Salmon taken in the Tames which I present to y'' Honour hoping the tast thereof will meliorate my wine." That Sir Samuel could appre- ciate the good things of life as well as the best cavalier is seen in the message -he sent to his father. Sir Oliver, who is in Par- liament, where " wee satt in the House till six at night and fought the Babbell stoutly." Sir Samuel, to fortify his stout- hearted father for battle with the Parliamentary obstructives of his day sends him a " Red Deer Pie, with which you shall receive three brace of Phesants, two Couple of Tayle, six Cockes, two brace of Partridges and two dozen of Snipes." That he had some regard also to the pomps and vanities is seen from the order he gives to his father's confidential ser- vant, Edward Bynion, who, there is reason to believe, was John Bunyan's uncle — his father's brother Edward, who also married his mother's sister Rose. Bynion has foimd, " in Mr. Cubberd's shop French Scarlett " for Sir Samuel's cloake at two guineas a yard, as good as any in London. " To tryme the Cloake will require eight and a half dozens of Buttons and Loopes which, if they be rich will cost forty shillings a dozen," so that "cloake and tryming will come to £30." Remembering how much this sum meant in those days, it would not seem that the Presbyterian soldier whom Butler styles Sir Hudibras, erred on the side of parsimony or Puritan sadness. As this is probably the man under whom John Bunyan served his brief soldier life, we are interested in catching these few glimpses of him. He appears to have been a man of keen in- sight and strong common sense ; his personal valour was as unquestioned as his military skill, and it was probably easier for Butler, after living under his roof, to lampoon him at a safe 1645.] TSE CIVIL WARS. 47 distance in his "Hudibras" than it was for the enemy to meet him in the fair encounter of an open field. Royalist ridicule of men who had grave and anxious duties to discharge in defending the ancient constitutional liberties of England may be very amusing to read, but it is not history, and must not be mistaken for it.* Bedfordshire, through its representatives in ParKament as well as by its military action, pronounced strongly against the unconstitutional policy of Charles. There were only three counties in England all of whose members for county and borough alike were on the side of Hampden and Pym, and Bedfordshire was one of the three. In the Upper House the Earl of Bedford was, at the beginning of the struggle, on the same side, as was the Earl of Bolingbroke and also Lord St. John of Bletsoe, who lost his life at the battle of Edgehill. Henry, Earl of Kent, who succeeded his father at Wrest Park in 1643, was also a Parliamentarian, as was the Earl of Manchester, whose seat was only a mile or two over the county border, and who, as Lord Kimbolton, had resisted the King in Parliament, as he did afterwards in the field. In addition to the leaders there were resolute men in all parts of the county, and in all ranks of life, whose sympathies were actively on the same side. The stream being thus mainly one way, Bedfordshire did not suffer within its own borders from the consequences of civil war, to the same extent as some other counties. There were hardships endured from the free quartering of the soldiery, and there were occasional raids and skirmishes, of course. In the autumn of 1643 Sir Lewis Dyve rode into Ampthill with a party of horse, and carried off as prisoners to Oxford "divers of the well-affected gentry and freeholders, who were met as ,a committee appointed by Parliament." f In the following June the King, passing through Hockliffe, on a Sunday, towards Bedford, plundered * It would seem that Oliver Cromwell's eldest and most promising son served under Sir Samuel Luke, and died in Newport garrison, while he was governor. In the "Parliament Scout "for March 15th — 22nd, 1643-4, there is the following entry : " Cromwell hath lost his eldest son, who is dead of the small pox in Newport [Pagnel], a civil young gentleman and the joy of his father." t Wallington's JERsioncaZ iVo