of the quakers. Having been answered by Edward Burrough [q. v.], an ardent and somewhat foul-mouthed member of that sect, Bunyan replied the next year in ‘A Vindication of Gospel Truths,’ in which he repays his antagonist in his own coin, calling him ‘a gross railing Rabshakeh,’ who ‘befools himself,’ and proves his complete ignorance of the gospel.’ Like the former work it is written in a very nervous style, showing a great command of plain English, as well as a thorough acquaintance with Holy Scripture. 'A third book was published by Bunyan in 1658 on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, under the horror-striking title of ‘Sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a Damned Soul.’ It issued from the press a few days before Cromwell’s death. In this work, as its title would suggest, Bunyan gives full scope to his vivid imagination in describing the condition of the lost. It contains many touches of racy humour, especially in his similes, and the whole is written in the nervous, forcible English of which he was master.
On the Restoration the old acts against nonconformists were speedily revived. The meeting-houses were closed. All persons were required under severe penalties to attend their parish church. The ejected clergy were reinstated. It became an illegal act to conduct divine service except in accordance with the ritual of the church, or for one not in episcopal orders to address a congregation. Bunyan continued his ministrations in barns, in private houses, under the trees, wherever he found brethren ready to pray and hear. So daring and notorious an offender was not likely to long unpunished. Within six months of Charles's landing he was arrested, on 12 Nov. 1660, at the little hamlet of Lower Samsell by Harlington, about thirteen miles from Bedford to the south, where he was going to hold a religious service in a private house. The issuing of the warrant had become known, and Bunyan might have escaped if he had been so minded, but he was not the man to play the coward. If he died, it would ‘make an ill-savour in the county’ and dishearten the weaker brethren. If he ran before a warrant, others might run before ‘great words.’ While he was conducting the service he was arrested and taken before Mr. Justice Wingate, who, though really desirous to release him, was compelled by his obstinate refusal to forbear preaching to commit him for trial to the county gaol, which, with perhaps a brief interval of enlargement in 1666, was to be his ‘close and uncomfortable’ place of abode for the next twelve years. This prison to which Bunyan was committed was not, as an obstinate and widespread error has represented, the ‘town gaol,’ or rather lock-up house, which occupied one of the piers of the many-arched Ouse bridge, for the temporary incarceration of petty offenders against municipal law, but the county gaol, a much less confined and comfortless abode. A few weeks after his committal the quarter sessions for January 1661 were held at Bedford, and Bunyan was indicted for his offence. The proceedings seem to have been irregular. There was no desire on the part of the justices to deal hardly with the prisoner; but he confessed the indictment, and declared his determination to repeat the offence on the first opportunity. The justices had therefore no choice in the matter. They were bound to administer the law as it stood. So he was sentenced to a further three months' term of imprisonment, and if then he persisted in his contumacy he would be ‘banished the realm,’ and if he returned without royal license he would ‘stretch by the neck for it.’ Towards the end of the three months, with an evident desire to avoid proceeding to extremities, the clerk of the peace was sent to him by the justices to endeavour to induce him to conform, But, as might have been anticipated, all attempts to bend Bunyan's sturdy nature were vain. Every kind of compromise, however kindly and sensibly urged, was steadily refused. He would not substitute private exhortation, which might have been allowed him, for public preaching. ‘The law,’ he replied, ‘had provided two ways of obeying-one to obey actively, and if he could not bring his conscience to that, then to suffer whatever penalty the law enacted.’
Three weeks later, 23 April 1661, the coronation of Charles II afforded an opportunity of enlargement. All prisoners for every offence short of felony were to be released. Those who were waiting their trials might be dismissed at once. Those convicted and under sentence might sue out a pardon under the great seal at any time within the year. Bunyan failed to profit by the royal clemency. Although he had not been legally convicted, for no witnesses had been heard against him, nor had he pleaded to the indictment, his trial having been little more than a conversation between him and the court, the authorities chose to regard it as a legal conviction, rendering it necessary that a pardon should be sued for.
About a year before his apprehension at Samsell, Bunyan had taken a second wife, Elizabeth, to watch over his four little motherless children. This noble-hearted woman showed undaunted courage in seeking her
