their meetings, and was
employed on the business of the congregation. Nay, even his preaching,
which was the cause of his imprisonment, was not forbidden. "I
followed," he says, writing of this period, "my wonted course of
preaching, taking all occasions that were put into my hand to visit the
people of God." But this indulgence was very brief and was brought
sharply to an end. It was plainly irregular, and depended on the
connivance of his jailer. We cannot be surprised that when it came to
the magistrates' ears--"my enemies," Bunyan rather unworthily calls
them--they were seriously displeased. Confounding Bunyan with the Fifth
Monarchy men and other turbulent sectaries, they imagined that his visits
to London had a political object, "to plot, and raise division, and make
insurrections," which, he honestly adds, "God knows was a slander." The
jailer was all but "cast out of his place," and threatened with an
indictment for breach of trust, while his own liberty was so seriously
"straitened" that he was prohibited even "to look out at the door." The
last time Bunyan's name appears as present at a church meeting is October
28, 1661, nor do we see it again till October 9, 1668, only four years
before his twelve years term of imprisonment expired.

But though his imprisonment was not so severe, nor his prison quite so
narrow and wretched as some word-painters have described them, during the
greater part of the time his condition was a dreary and painful one,
especially when spent, as it sometimes was, "under cruel and oppressive
jailers." The enforced separation from his wife and children, especially
his tenderly loved blind daughter, Mary, was a continually renewed
anguish to his loving heart. "The parting with them," he writes, "hath
often been to me as pulling the flesh from the bones; and that not only
because I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but also because I
should often have brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and
wants my poor family was like to meet with, should I be taken from them;
especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer to my heart than all
beside. Poor child, thought I, thou must be beaten, thou must beg, thou
must suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I
cannot now endure the wind should blow on thee. O, the thoughts of the
hardships my blind one might go under would break my heart to pieces." He
seemed to himself like a man pulling do