years later, when the renewal of the persecution of the Nonconformists
induced him to make over all his property--little enough in good sooth--to
his wife by deed of gift.

The former of these events demands our attention, not so much for itself
as for its connection with Bishop Barlow's interference in Bunyan's
behalf, and, still more, for its results in the production of "The
Pilgrim's Progress." Until very recently the bare fact of this later
imprisonment, briefly mentioned by Charles Doe and another of his early
biographers, was all that was known to us. They even leave the date to
be gathered, though both agree in limiting its duration to six months or
thereabouts. The recent discovery, among the Chauncey papers, by Mr. W.
G. Thorpe, of the original warrant under which Bunyan was at this time
sent to gaol, supplies the missing information. It has been already
noticed that the Declaration of Indulgence, under which Bunyan was
liberated in 1672, was very short-lived. Indeed it barely lasted in
force a twelvemonth. Granted on the 15th of March of that year, it was
withdrawn on the 9th of March of the following year, at the instance of
the House of Commons, who had taken alarm at a suspension of the laws of
the realm by the "inherent power" of the sovereign, without the advice or
sanction of Parliament. The Declaration was cancelled by Charles II.,
the monarch, it is said, tearing off the Great Seal with his own hands, a
subsidy being promised to the royal spendthrift as a reward for his
complaisance. The same year the Test Act became law. Bunyan therefore
and his fellow Nonconformists were in a position of greater peril, as far
as the letter of the law was concerned, than they had ever been. But, as
Dr. Stoughton has remarked, "the letter of the law is not to be taken as
an accurate index of the Nonconformists' condition. The pressure of a
bad law depends very much upon the hands employed in its administration."
Unhappily for Bunyan, the parties in whose hands the execution of the