y
noticed that the Declaration of Indulgence, under which Bunyan was
liberated in 1672, was very short-lived. Indeed it barely lasted in
force a twelvemonth. Granted on the 15th of March of that year, it was
withdrawn on the 9th of March of the following year, at the instance of
the House of Commons, who had taken alarm at a suspension of the laws of
the realm by the "inherent power" of the sovereign, without the advice or
sanction of Parliament. The Declaration was cancelled by Charles II.,
the monarch, it is said, tearing off the Great Seal with his own hands, a
subsidy being promised to the royal spendthrift as a reward for his
complaisance. The same year the Test Act became law. Bunyan therefore
and his fellow Nonconformists were in a position of greater peril, as far
as the letter of the law was concerned, than they had ever been. But, as
Dr. Stoughton has remarked, "the letter of the law is not to be taken as
an accurate index of the Nonconformists' condition. The pressure of a
bad law depends very much upon the hands employed in its administration."
Unhappily for Bunyan, the parties in whose hands the execution of the
penal statutes against Nonconformists rested in Bedfordshire were his
bitter personal enemies, who were not likely to let them lie inactive.
The prime mover in the matter was doubtless Dr. William Foster, that
"right Judas" whom we shall remember holding the candle in Bunyan's face
in the hall of Harlington House at his first apprehension, and showing
such feigned affection "as if he would have leaped on his neck and kissed
him." He had some time before this become Chancellor of the Bishop of
Lincoln, and Commissary of the Court of the Archdeacon of Bedford,
offices which put in his hands extensive powers which he had used with
the most relentless severity. He has damned himself to eternal infamy by
the bitter zeal he showed in hunting down Dissenters, inflicting
exorbitant fines, and breaking into their houses and distraining their
goods for a full discharge, maltreating their wives and daughters, and
haling the offenders to prison. Having been chiefly instrumental in
Bunyan's first committal to gaol, he doubtless viewed his release with
indignation as the leader of the Bedfordshire sectaries who was doing
more mischief to the cause of conformity, which it was his province at
all hazards to maintain, than any other twenty men. The church would
never be safe till he was clapped in prison ag