The Life of John Bunyan [3]
being that he was used to ring.
The rough flagged floor, "all worn and broken with the hobnailed
boots of generations of ringers," remains undisturbed. One cannot
see the door, set in its solid masonry, without recalling the
figure of Bunyan standing in it, after conscience, "beginning to be
tender," told him that "such practice was but vain," but yet unable
to deny himself the pleasure of seeing others ring, hoping that,
"if a bell should fall," he could "slip out" safely "behind the
thick walls," and so "be preserved notwithstanding." Behind the
church, on the south side, stand some picturesque ivy-clad remains
of the once stately mansion of the Hillersdons, erected on the site
of the nunnery buildings in the early part of the seventeenth
century, with a porch attributed to Inigo Jones, which may have
given Bunyan the first idea of "the very stately Palace, the name
of which was Beautiful."
The cottage where Bunyan was born, between the two brooks in the
fields at Harrowden, has been so long destroyed that even the
knowledge of its site has passed away. That in which he lived for
six years (1649-1655) after his first marriage, and where his
children were born, is still standing in the village street, but
modern reparations have robbed it of all interest.
From this description of the surroundings among which Bunyan passed
the earliest and most impressionable years of his life, we pass to
the subject of our biography himself. The notion that Bunyan was
of gipsy descent, which was not entirely rejected by Sir Walter
Scott, and which has more recently received elaborate support from
writers on the other side of the Atlantic, may be pronounced
absolutely baseless. Even if Bunyan's inquiry of his father
"whether the family was of Israelitish descent or no," which has
been so strangely pressed into the service of the theory, could be
supposed to have anything to do with the matter, the decided
negative with which his question was met - "he told me, 'No, we
were not'" - would, one would have thought, have settled the point.
But some fictions die hard. However low the family had sunk, so
that in his own words, "his father's house was of that rank that is
meanest and most despised of all the families in the land," "of a
low and inconsiderable generation," the name, as we have seen, was
one of long standing in Bunyan's native county, and had once taken
far higher rank in it. And his parents, though poor, were
evidently worthy people, of good repute among their village
neighbours. Bunyan seems to be describing his own father and his
wandering life when he speaks of "an honest poor labouring man,
who, like Adam unparadised, had all the world to get his bread in,
and was very careful to maintain his family." He and his wife were
also careful with a higher care that their children should be
properly educated. "Notwithstanding the meanness and
inconsiderableness of my parents," writes Bunyan, "it pleased God
to put it into their hearts to put me to school, to learn both to
read and write." If we accept the evidence of the "Scriptural
Poems," published for the first time twelve years after his death,
the genuineness of which, though questioned by Dr. Brown, there
seems no sufficient reason to doubt, the little education he had
was "gained in a grammar school." This would have been that
founded by Sir William Harpur in Queen Mary's reign in the
neighbouring town of Bedford. Thither we may picture the little
lad trudging day by day along the mile and a half of footpath and
road from his father's cottage by the brookside, often, no doubt,
wet and miry enough, not, as he says, to "go to school to Aristotle
or Plato," but to be taught "according to the rate of other poor
men's children." The Bedford school-master about this time,
William Barnes by name, was a negligent sot, charged with "night-
walking" and haunting "taverns and alehouses,"
The rough flagged floor, "all worn and broken with the hobnailed
boots of generations of ringers," remains undisturbed. One cannot
see the door, set in its solid masonry, without recalling the
figure of Bunyan standing in it, after conscience, "beginning to be
tender," told him that "such practice was but vain," but yet unable
to deny himself the pleasure of seeing others ring, hoping that,
"if a bell should fall," he could "slip out" safely "behind the
thick walls," and so "be preserved notwithstanding." Behind the
church, on the south side, stand some picturesque ivy-clad remains
of the once stately mansion of the Hillersdons, erected on the site
of the nunnery buildings in the early part of the seventeenth
century, with a porch attributed to Inigo Jones, which may have
given Bunyan the first idea of "the very stately Palace, the name
of which was Beautiful."
The cottage where Bunyan was born, between the two brooks in the
fields at Harrowden, has been so long destroyed that even the
knowledge of its site has passed away. That in which he lived for
six years (1649-1655) after his first marriage, and where his
children were born, is still standing in the village street, but
modern reparations have robbed it of all interest.
From this description of the surroundings among which Bunyan passed
the earliest and most impressionable years of his life, we pass to
the subject of our biography himself. The notion that Bunyan was
of gipsy descent, which was not entirely rejected by Sir Walter
Scott, and which has more recently received elaborate support from
writers on the other side of the Atlantic, may be pronounced
absolutely baseless. Even if Bunyan's inquiry of his father
"whether the family was of Israelitish descent or no," which has
been so strangely pressed into the service of the theory, could be
supposed to have anything to do with the matter, the decided
negative with which his question was met - "he told me, 'No, we
were not'" - would, one would have thought, have settled the point.
But some fictions die hard. However low the family had sunk, so
that in his own words, "his father's house was of that rank that is
meanest and most despised of all the families in the land," "of a
low and inconsiderable generation," the name, as we have seen, was
one of long standing in Bunyan's native county, and had once taken
far higher rank in it. And his parents, though poor, were
evidently worthy people, of good repute among their village
neighbours. Bunyan seems to be describing his own father and his
wandering life when he speaks of "an honest poor labouring man,
who, like Adam unparadised, had all the world to get his bread in,
and was very careful to maintain his family." He and his wife were
also careful with a higher care that their children should be
properly educated. "Notwithstanding the meanness and
inconsiderableness of my parents," writes Bunyan, "it pleased God
to put it into their hearts to put me to school, to learn both to
read and write." If we accept the evidence of the "Scriptural
Poems," published for the first time twelve years after his death,
the genuineness of which, though questioned by Dr. Brown, there
seems no sufficient reason to doubt, the little education he had
was "gained in a grammar school." This would have been that
founded by Sir William Harpur in Queen Mary's reign in the
neighbouring town of Bedford. Thither we may picture the little
lad trudging day by day along the mile and a half of footpath and
road from his father's cottage by the brookside, often, no doubt,
wet and miry enough, not, as he says, to "go to school to Aristotle
or Plato," but to be taught "according to the rate of other poor
men's children." The Bedford school-master about this time,
William Barnes by name, was a negligent sot, charged with "night-
walking" and haunting "taverns and alehouses,"