e as
he desired, these were the exception. The congregation meeting in Josias
Roughead's barn must have been, take them as a whole, a quiet,
God-fearing, spiritually-minded folk, of whom their pastor could think
with thankfulness and satisfaction as "his hope and joy and crown of
rejoicing." From such he could not be severed lightly. Inducements
which would have been powerful to a meaner nature fell dead on his
independent spirit. He was not "a man that preached by way of bargain
for money," and, writes Doe, "more than once he refused a more plentiful
income to keep his station." As Dr. Brown says: "He was too deeply
rooted on the scene of his lifelong labours and sufferings to think of
striking his tent till the command came from the Master to come up to the
higher service for which he had been ripening so long." At Bedford,
therefore, he remained; quietly staying on in his cottage in St.
Cuthbert's, and ministering to his humble flock, loving and beloved, as
Mr. Froude writes, "through changes of ministry, Popish plots, and
Monmouth rebellions, while the terror of a restoration of Popery was
bringing on the Revolution; careless of kings and cabinets, and confident
that Giant Pope had lost his power for harm, and thenceforward could only
bite his nails at the passing pilgrims."

Bunyan's peace was not, however, altogether undisturbed. Once it
received a shock in a renewal of his imprisonment, though only for a
brief period, in 1675, to which we owe the world-famous "Pilgrim's
Progress"; and it was again threatened, though not actually disturbed ten
years later, when the renewal of the persecution of the Nonconformists
induced him to make over all his property--little enough in good sooth--to
his wife by deed of gift.

The former of these events demands our attention, not so much for itself
as for its connection with Bishop Barlow's interference in Bunyan's
behalf, and, still more, for its results in the production of "The
Pilgrim's Progress." Until very recently the bare fact of this later
imprisonment, briefly mentioned by Charles Doe and another of his early
biographers, was all that was known to us. They even leave the date to
be gathered, though both agree in limiting its duration to six months or
thereabouts. The recent discovery, among the Chauncey papers, by Mr. W.
G. Thorpe, of the original warrant under which Bunyan was at this time
sent to gaol, supplies the missing information. It has been alread