rue copy, too." "Then away rid the scholar."

The fame of such a preacher, naturally, soon spread far and wide; all the
countryside flocked eagerly to hear him. In some places, as at Meldreth
in Cambridgeshire, and Yelden in his own county of Bedfordshire, the
pulpits of the parish churches were opened to him. At Yelden, the
Rector, Dr. William Dell, the Puritan Master of Caius College, Cambridge,
formerly Chaplain to the army under Fairfax, roused the indignation of
his orthodox parishioners by allowing him--"one Bunyon of Bedford, a
tinker," as he is ignominiously styled in the petition sent up to the
House of Lords in 1660--to preach in his parish church on Christmas Day.
But, generally, the parochial clergy were his bitterest enemies. "When I
first went to preach the word abroad," he writes, "the Doctors and
priests of the country did open wide against me." Many were envious of
his success where they had so signally failed. In the words of Mr. Henry
Deane, when defending Bunyan against the attacks of Dr. T. Smith,
Professor of Arabic and Keeper of the University Library at Cambridge,
who had come upon Bunyan preaching in a barn at Toft, they were "angry
with the tinker because he strove to mend souls as well as kettles and
pans," and proved himself more skilful in his craft than those who had
graduated at a university. Envy is ever the mother of detraction.
Slanders of the blackest dye against his moral character were freely
circulated, and as readily believed. It was the common talk that he was
a thorough reprobate. Nothing was too bad for him. He was "a witch, a
Jesuit, a highwayman, and the like." It was reported that he had "his
misses and his bastards; that he had two wives at once," &c. Such
charges roused all the man in Bunyan. Few passages in his writings show
more passion than that in "Grace Abounding," in which he defends himself
from the "fools or knaves" who were their authors. He "begs belief of no
man, and if they believe him or disbelieve him it is all one to him. But
he would have them know how utterly baseless their accusations are." "My
foes," he writes, "have missed their mark in their open shooting at me. I
am not the man. If all the fornicators and adulterers in England were
hanged by the neck till they be dead, John Bunyan would be still alive. I
know not whether there is such a thing as a woman breathing under the
copes of the whole heaven but by their apparel, their children,