the hottest. In its earliest entries we find Bunyan's name, which occurs
repeatedly up to the date of his final release in 1672. Not one of these
notices gives the slightest allusion of his being a prisoner. He is
deputed with others to visit and remonstrate with backsliding brethren,
and fulfil other commissions on behalf of the congregation, as if he were
in the full enjoyment of his liberty. This was in the two years'
interval between the expiration of the Conventicle Act, March 2, 1667-8,
and the passing of the new Act, styled by Marvell, "the quintessence of
arbitrary malice," April 11, 1670. After a few months of hot
persecution, when a disgraceful system of espionage was set on foot and
the vilest wretches drove a lucrative trade as spies on "meetingers," the
severity greatly lessened. Charles II. was already meditating the
issuing of a Declaration of Indulgence, and signified his disapprobation
of the "forceable courses" in which, "the sad experience of twelve years"
showed, there was "very little fruit." One of the first and most notable
consequences of this change of policy was Bunyan's release.

Mr. Offor's patient researches in the State Paper Office have proved that
the Quakers, than whom no class of sectaries had suffered more severely
from the persecuting edicts of the Crown, were mainly instrumental in
throwing open the prison doors to those who, like Bunyan, were in bonds
for the sake of their religion. Gratitude to John Groves, the Quaker
mate of Tattersall's fishing boat, in which Charles had escaped to France
after the battle of Worcester, had something, and the untiring advocacy
of George Whitehead, the Quaker, had still more, to do with this act of
royal clemency. We can readily believe that the good-natured Charles was
not sorry to have an opportunity of evidencing his sense of former
services rendered at a time of his greatest extremity. But the main
cause lay much deeper, and is connected with what Lord Macaulay justly
styles "one of the worst acts of one of the worst governments that
England has ever seen"--that of the Cabal. Our national honour was at
its lowest ebb. Charles had just concluded the profligate Treaty of
Dover, by which, in return for the "protection" he sought from the French
king, he declared himself a Roman Catholic at heart, and bound himself to
take the first opportunity of "changing the present state of religion in
England for a better," and restoring the authori