, and that he ran up and down
and did harm, while he was better maintained by his preaching than by
following his tinker's craft. At last he waxed so violent that "withal
she thought he would have struck her." In the midst of all his coarse
abuse, however, Twisden hit the mark when he asked: "What! you think we
can do what we list?" And when we find Hale, confessedly the soundest
lawyer of the time, whose sympathies were all with the prisoner, after
calling for the Statute Book, thus summing up the matter: "I am sorry,
woman, that I can do thee no good. Thou must do one of these three
things, viz., either apply thyself to the king, or sue out his pardon, or
get a writ of error," which last, he told her, would be the cheapest
course--we may feel sure that Bunyan's Petition was not granted because
it could not be granted legally. The blame of his continued imprisonment
lay, if anywhere, with the law, not with its administrators. This is not
always borne in mind as it ought to be. As Mr. Froude remarks, "Persons
often choose to forget that judges are sworn to administer the law which
they find, and rail at them as if the sentences which they are obliged by
their oath to pass were their own personal acts." It is not surprising
that Elizabeth Bunyan was unable to draw this distinction, and that she
left the Swan chamber in tears, not, however, so much at what she thought
the judges' "hardheartedness to her and her husband," as at the thought
of "the sad account such poor creatures would have to give" hereafter,
for what she deemed their "opposition to Christ and His gospel."

No steps seem to have been taken by Bunyan's wife, or any of his
influential friends, to carry out either of the expedients named by Hale.
It may have been that the money needed was not forthcoming, or, what
Southey remarks is "quite probable,"--"because it is certain that Bunyan,
thinking himself in conscience bound to preach in defiance of the law,
would soon have made his case worse than it then was."

At the next assizes, which were held in January, 1662, Bunyan again made
strenuous efforts to get his name put on the calendar of felons, that he
might have a regular trial before the king's judges and be able to plead
his cause in person. This, however, was effectually thwarted by the
unfriendly influence of the county magistrates by whom he had been
committed, and the Clerk of the Peace, Mr. Cobb, who having failed in his
kindly meant attemp