personal friend of Bunyan's, that he was present at the siege of
Leicester, in 1645, as a soldier in the Parliamentary army. This
statement, however, is in direct defiance of Bunyan's own words. For the
one thing certain in the matter is that wherever the siege may have been,
Bunyan was not at it. He tells us plainly that he was "drawn to go," and
that when he was just starting, he gave up his place to a comrade who
went in his room, and was shot through the head. Bunyan's presence at
the siege of Leicester, which has been so often reported that it has
almost been regarded as an historical truth, must therefore take its
place among the baseless creations of a fertile fancy.

Bunyan's military career, wherever passed and under whatever standard,
was very short. The civil war was drawing near the end of its first
stage when he enlisted. He had only been a soldier a few months when the
battle of Naseby, fatal to the royal cause, was fought, June 14, 1645.
Bristol was surrendered by Prince Rupert, Sept. 10th. Three days later
Montrose was totally defeated at Philiphaugh; and after a vain attempt to
relieve Chester, Charles shut himself up in Oxford. The royal garrisons
yielded in quick succession; in 1646 the armies on both sides were
disbanded, and the first act in the great national tragedy having come to
a close, Bunyan returned to Elstow, and resumed his tinker's work at the
paternal forge. His father, old Thomas Bunyan, it may here be mentioned,
lived all through his famous son's twelve years' imprisonment, witnessed
his growing celebrity as a preacher and a writer, and died in the early
part of 1676, just when John Bunyan was passing through his last brief
period of durance, which was to give birth to the work which has made him
immortal.