at Elstow, a village near Bedford, in the year
1628. It was a memorable epoch in English history, for in that year
the House of Commons extorted the consent of Charles I. to the
Petition of Right. The stir of politics, however, did not reach the
humble household into which the little boy was introduced. His father
was hardly occupied in earning bread for his wife and children as a
mender of pots and kettles: a tinker,--working in neighbours' houses
or at home, at such business as might be brought to him. 'The
Bunyans,' says a friend, 'were of the national religion, as men of
that calling commonly were.' Bunyan himself, in a passage which has
been always understood to refer to his father, describes him 'as 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.' In those days there were no village schools in England; the
education of the poor was an apprenticeship to agriculture or
handicraft; their religion they learnt at home or in church. Young
Bunyan was more fortunate. In Bedford there was a grammar school,
which had been founded in Queen Mary's time by the Lord Mayor of
London, Sir William Harper. Hither, when he was old enough to walk to
and fro, over the mile of road between Elstow and Bedford, the child
was sent, if not to learn Aristotle and Plato, to learn at least 'to
read and write according to the rate of other poor men's children.'

If religion was not taught at school, it was taught with some care in
the cottages and farmhouses by parents and masters. It was common in
many parts of England, as late as the end of the last century, for the
farmers to gather their apprentices about them on Sunday afternoons,
and to teach them the Catechism. Rude as was Bunyan's home, religious
notions of some kind had been early and vividly impressed upon him. He
caught, indeed, the ordinary habits of the boys among whom he was
thrown. He learnt to use bad language, and he often lied. When a
child's imagination is exceptionally active, the temptations to
untruth are correspondingly powerful. The inventive faculty has its
dangers, and Bunyan was eminently gifted in that way. He was a
violent, passionate boy besides, and thus he says of himself that for
lying and swearing he had no equal, and that his parents did not
sufficiently correct him. Wickedness, he declares in his own
remorseful story of his early years, became a second nature to him