THE LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN
by Edmund Venables, M.A.


CHAPTER I.


John Bunyan, the author of the book which has probably passed through
more editions, had a greater number of readers, and been translated into
more languages than any other book in the English tongue, was born in the
parish of Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in the latter part of the year 1628,
and was baptized in the parish church of the village on the last day of
November of that year.

The year of John Bunyan's birth was a momentous one both for the nation
and for the Church of England. Charles I., by the extorted assent to the
Petition of Right, had begun reluctantly to strip himself of the
irresponsible authority he had claimed, and had taken the first step in
the struggle between King and Parliament which ended in the House of
Commons seating itself in the place of the Sovereign. Wentworth (better
known as Lord Strafford) had finally left the Commons, baffled in his
nobly-conceived but vain hope of reconciling the monarch and his people,
and having accepted a peerage and the promise of the Presidency of the
Council of the North, was foreshadowing his policy of "Thorough," which
was destined to bring both his own head and that of his weak master to
the block. The Remonstrance of Parliament against the toleration of
Roman Catholics and the growth of Arminianism, had been presented to the
indignant king, who, wilfully blinded, had replied to it by the promotion
to high and lucrative posts in the Church of the very men against whom it
was chiefly directed. The most outrageous upholders of the royal