the peers, whom she calls Lord Barkwood, but whom unfortunately we cannot
now identify. He treated her kindly, and showed her petition to other
peers, who appear to have been acquainted with the circumstances of
Bunyan's case. They replied that the matter was beyond their province,
and that the question of her husband's release was committed to the
judges at the next assizes. These assizes were held at Bedford in the
following August. The judges of the circuit were Twisden and Sir Matthew
Hale. From the latter--the friend of Richard Baxter, who, as Burnet
records, took great care to "cover the Nonconformists, whom he thought
too hardly used, all he could from the seventies some designed; and
discouraged those who were inclined to stretch the laws too much against
them"--Bunyan's case would be certain to meet with sympathetic
consideration. But being set to administer the law, not according to his
private wishes, but according to its letter and its spirit, he was
powerless to relieve him. Three several times did Bunyan's noble-hearted
wife present her husband's petition that he might be heard, and his case
taken impartially into consideration. But the law forbad what Burnet
calls Sir Matthew Hale's "tender and compassionate nature" to have free
exercise. He "received the petition very mildly at her hand, telling her
that he would do her and her husband the best good he could; but he
feared he could do none." His brother judge's reception of her petition
was very different. Having thrown it into the coach, Twisden "snapt her
up," telling her, what after all was no more than the truth, that her
husband was a convicted person, and could not be released unless he would
promise to obey the law and abstain from preaching. On this the High
Sheriff, Edmund Wylde, of Houghton Conquest, spoke kindly to the poor
woman, and encouraged her to make a fresh application to the judges
before they left the town. So she made her way, "with abashed face and
trembling heart," to the large chamber at the Old Swan Inn at the Bridge
Foot, where the two judges were receiving a large number of the justices