said that he dared not leave off preaching as long as he could
speak. The judge asked if she thought her husband was to be allowed to
do as he pleased. She said that he was a peaceable person, and wished
only to be restored to a position in which he could maintain his
family. They had four small children who could not help themselves,
one of them being blind, and they had nothing to live upon as long as
her husband was in prison but the charity of their friends. Hale
remarked that she looked very young to have four children. 'I am but
mother-in-law to them,' she said, 'having not been married yet full
two years. I was with child when my husband was first apprehended, but
being young, I being dismayed at the news fell in labour, and so
continued for eight days. I was delivered, but my child died.'

Hale was markedly kind. He told her that as the conviction had been
recorded they could not set it aside. She might sue out a pardon if
she pleased, or she might obtain 'a writ of error,' which would be
simpler and less expensive.

She left the court in tears--tears, however, which were not altogether
tears of suffering innocence. 'It was not so much,' she said, 'because
they were so hardhearted against me and my husband, but to think what
a sad account such poor creatures would have to give at the coming of
the Lord.' No doubt both Bunyan and she thought themselves cruelly
injured, and they confounded the law with the administration of it.
Persons better informed than they often choose to forget that judges
are sworn to administer the law which they find, and rail at them as
if the sentences which they are obliged by their oaths to pass were
their own personal acts.

A pardon, it cannot be too often said, would have been of no use to
Bunyan, because he was determined to persevere in disobeying a law
which he considered to be unjust. The most real kindness which could
be shown to him was to leave him where he was. His imprisonment was
intended to be little more than nominal. His gaoler, not certainly
without the sanction of the sheriff, let him go where he pleased; once
even so far as London. He used his liberty as he had declared that he
would. 'I followed my wonted course of preaching,' he says, 'taking
all occasions that were put in my hand to visit the people of God.'
This was deliberate defiance. The authorities saw that he must be
either punished in earnest or the law would fall into contempt. He
admitted that he expe