ty of the Pope. The
announcement of his conversion Charles found it convenient to postpone.
Nor could the other part of his engagement be safely carried into effect
at once. It called for secret and cautious preparation. But to pave the
way for it, by an unconstitutional exercise of his prerogative he issued
a Declaration of Indulgence which suspended all penal laws against
"whatever sort of Nonconformists or Recusants." The latter were
evidently the real object of the indulgence; the former class were only
introduced the better to cloke his infamous design. Toleration, however,
was thus at last secured, and the long-oppressed Nonconformists hastened
to profit by it. "Ministers returned," writes Mr. J. R. Green, "after
years of banishment, to their homes and their flocks. Chapels were re-
opened. The gaols were emptied. Men were set free to worship God after
their own fashion. John Bunyan left the prison which had for twelve
years been his home." More than three thousand licenses to preach were
at once issued. One of the earliest of these, dated May 9, 1672, four
months before his formal pardon under the Great Seal, was granted to
Bunyan, who in the preceding January had been chosen their minister by
the little congregation at Bedford, and "giving himself up to serve
Christ and His Church in that charge, had received of the elders the
right hand of fellowship." The place licensed for the exercise of
Bunyan's ministry was a barn standing in an orchard, once forming part of
the Castle Moat, which one of the congregation, Josias Roughead, acting
for the members of his church, had purchased. The license bears date May
9, 1672. This primitive place of worship, in which Bunyan preached
regularly till his death, was pulled down in 1707, when a "three-ridged
meeting-house" was erected in its place. This in its turn gave way, in
1849, to the existing more seemly chapel, to which the present Duke of
Bedford, in 1876, presented a pair of noble bronze doors bearing scenes,
in high relief, from "The Pilgrim's Progress," the work of Mr. Frederick
Thrupp. In the vestry are preserved Bunyan's chair, and other relics of
the man who has made the name of Bedford famous to the whole civilized
world.

CHAPTER VII.

Mr. Green has observed that Bunyan "found compensation for the narrow
bounds of his prison in the wonderful activity of his pen. Tracts,
controversial treatises, poems, meditations, his 'Grace Abounding