in the county gaol.

This last imprisonment of Bunyan's lasted only half as many months as his
former imprisonment had lasted years. At the end of six months he was
again a free man. His release was due to the good officers of Owen,
Cromwell's celebrated chaplain, with Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln. The
suspicion which hung over this intervention from its being erroneously
attributed to his release in 1672, three years before Barlow became a
bishop, has been dispelled by the recently discovered warrant. The dates
and circumstances are now found to tally. The warrant for Bunyan's
apprehension bears date March 4, 1675. On the 14th of the following May
the supple and time-serving Barlow, after long and eager waiting for a
mitre, was elected to the see of Lincoln vacated by the death of Bishop
Fuller, and consecrated on the 27th of June. Barlow, a man of very
dubious churchmanship, who had succeeded in keeping his university
appointments undisturbed all through the Commonwealth, and who was yet
among the first with effusive loyalty to welcome the restoration of
monarchy, had been Owen's tutor at Oxford, and continued to maintain
friendly relations with him. As bishop of the diocese to which
Bedfordshire then, and long after, belonged, Barlow had the power, by the
then existing law, of releasing a prisoner for nonconformity on a bond
given by two persons that he would conform within half a year. A friend
of Bunyan's, probably Ichabod Chauncey, obtained a letter from Owen to
the bishop requesting him to employ this prerogative in Bunyan's behalf.
Barlow with hollow complaisance expressed his particular kindness for Dr.
Owen, and his desire to deny him nothing he could legally grant. He
would even strain a point to serve him. But he had only just been made a
bishop, and what was asked was a new thing to him. He desired a little
time to consider of it. If he could do it, Owen might be assured of his
readiness to oblige him. A second application at the end of a fortnight