He would be sent away beyond the seas to Spain or Constantinople--either
Cobb's or Bunyan's colonial geography was rather at fault here--or some
other remote part of the world, and what good could he do to his friends
then? "Neighbour Bunyan" had better consider these things seriously
before the Quarter Session, and be ruled by good advice. The gaoler here
put in his word in support of Cobb's arguments: "Indeed, sir, I hope he
will be ruled." But all Cobb's friendly reasonings and expostulations
were ineffectual to bend Bunyan's sturdy will. He would yield to no-one
in his loyalty to his sovereign, and his readiness to obey the law. But,
he said, with a hairsplitting casuistry he would have indignantly
condemned in others, the law provided two ways of obeying, "one to obey
actively, and if his conscience forbad that, then to obey passively; to
lie down and suffer whatever they might do to him." The Clerk of the
Peace saw that it was no use to prolong the argument any further. "At
this," writes Bunyan, "he sat down, and said no more; which, when he had
done, I did thank him for his civil and meek discoursing with me; and so
we parted: O that we might meet in heaven!"

The Coronation which took place very soon after this interview, April 13,
1661, afforded a prospect of release without unworthy submission. The
customary proclamation, which allowed prisoners under sentence for any
offence short of felony to sue out a pardon for twelve months from that
date, suspended the execution of the sentence of banishment and gave a
hope that the prison doors might be opened for him. The local
authorities taking no steps to enable him to profit by the royal
clemency, by inserting his name in the list of pardonable offenders, his
second wife, Elizabeth, travelled up to London,--no slight venture for a
young woman not so long raised from the sick bed on which the first news
of her husband's arrest had laid her,--and with dauntless courage made
her way to the House of Lords, where she presented her petition to one of