of the Commons--to the rich living
Montagu's consecration had vacated. Montaigne, the licenser of
Mainwaring's incriminated sermon, was raised to the Archbishopric of
York, while Neile and Laud, who were openly named in the Remonstrance as
the "troublers of the English Israel," were rewarded respectively with
the rich see of Durham and the important and deeply-dyed Puritan diocese
of London. Charles was steadily sowing the wind, and destined to reap
the whirlwind which was to sweep him from his throne, and involve the
monarchy and the Church in the same overthrow. Three months before
Bunyan's birth Buckingham, on the eve of his departure for the
beleaguered and famine-stricken city of Rochelle, sanguinely hoping to
conclude a peace with the French king beneath its walls, had been struck
down by the knife of a fanatic, to the undisguised joy of the majority of
the nation, bequeathing a legacy of failure and disgrace in the fall of
the Protestant stronghold on which the eyes of Europe had been so long
anxiously fixed.

The year was closing gloomily, with ominous forecasts of the coming
hurricane, when the babe who was destined to leave so imperishable a name
in English literature, first saw the light in an humble cottage in an
obscure Bedfordshire village. His father, Thomas Bunyan, though styling
himself in his will by the more dignified title of "brazier," was more
properly what is known as a "tinker"; "a mender of pots and kettles,"
according to Bunyan's contemporary biographer, Charles Doe. He was not,
however, a mere tramp or vagrant, as travelling tinkers were and usually
are still, much less a disreputable sot, a counterpart of Shakespeare's
Christopher Sly, but a man with a recognized calling, having a settled
home and an acknowledged position in the village community of Elstow. The
family was of long standing there, but had for some generations been
going down in the world. Bunyan's grandfather, Thomas Bunyan, as we
learn from his still extant will, carried on the occupation of a "petty
chapman," or small retail dealer, in his own freehold cottage, which he
bequeathed, "with its appurtenances," to his second wife, Ann, to
descend, after her death, to her stepson, his namesake, Thomas, and her
own son Edward, in equal shares. This cottage, which was probably John
Bunyan's birthplace, persistent tradition, confirmed by the testimony of
local names, warrants us in placing near the hamlet of Harrowden, a mile