1660 When the monarchy was restored that year, it became illegal once again for a preacher to conduct a divine service outside the ritual of the Anglican Church. Those not in Episcopal orders were forbidden even from preaching.
John Bunyan was an itinerant tinker by trade, and a lay preacher by calling. This meant that he would gather congregations to pray and hear him preach the word of God – by the side of a road, under a tree, or wherever else people wanted to convene.
Just six months after Charles II returned to England, Bunyan was arrested in a village near Bedford as he was about to conduct a service in a private house. He was imprisoned for twelve years. Though he could preach in prison, his quarters were very uncomfortable. He had to sleep on straw; he was held in a room without a chimney. Worst of all, he was separated from his wife and children, for whom he was always anxious. Occasionally the authorities would offer to release him, provided he undertook not to preach. Despite his privations, he always refused these offers.
While in prison Bunyan wrote the most complete spiritual autobiography in English, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) and – scholars now think – most of his masterpiece, Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). Pilgrim’s Progress blends the language of the King James Bible with evangelical theology and English 17th-century vernacular speech and geography to form the greatest Christian allegory of salvation in the language. The book was and remains a bestseller. In Bunyan’s lifetime the first, most substantial part went through eleven editions, and it has never been out of print since.
Bunyan was let out of jail in 1672, when Charles II, preparing the ground for toleration of Roman Catholics, issued his Declaration of Religious Indulgence. Under the new law Bunyan was granted one of the first licences allowing non-conformist pastors to preach wherever they could gather a congregation. He built a new meeting-house in Bedford and even set up new congregations.
In March 1675, after Parliament had forced Charles to withdraw the Declaration of Indulgence, Bunyan’s fortunes changed once again for the worse, and the devout preacher found himself back in jail. ‘Maybe this is not so much a prison as an office from which I can reach the world with Christ’s message’, he wrote.