to the east of the village of Elstow, at a place long called "Bunyan's
End," where two fields are still called by the name of "Bunyans" and
"Further Bunyans." This small freehold appears to have been all that
remained, at the death of John Bunyan's grandfather, of a property once
considerable enough to have given the name of its possessor to the whole
locality.

The family of Buingnon, Bunyun, Buniun, Boynon, Bonyon, or Binyan (the
name is found spelt in no fewer than thirty-four different ways, of which
the now-established form, Bunyan, is almost the least frequent) is one
that had established itself in Bedfordshire from very early times. The
first place in connection with which the name appears is Pulloxhill,
about nine miles from Elstow. In 1199, the year of King John's
accession, the Bunyans had approached still nearer to that parish. One
William Bunion held land at Wilstead, not more than a mile off. In 1327,
the first year of Edward III., one of the same name, probably his
descendant, William Boynon, is found actually living at Harrowden, close
to the spot which popular tradition names as John Bunyan's birthplace,
and was the owner of property there. We have no further notices of the
Bunyans of Elstow till the sixteenth century. We then find them greatly
fallen. Their ancestral property seems little by little to have passed
into other hands, until in 1542 nothing was left but "a messuage and
pightell {1} with the appurtenances, and nine acres of land." This small
residue other entries on the Court Rolls show to have been still further
diminished by sale. The field already referred to, known as "Bonyon's
End," was sold by "Thomas Bonyon, of Elstow, labourer," son of William
Bonyon, the said Thomas and his wife being the keepers of a small
roadside inn, at which their overcharges for their home-baked bread and
home-brewed beer were continually bringing them into trouble with the
petty local courts of the day. Thomas Bunyan, John Bunyan's father, was
born in the last days of Elizabeth, and was baptized February 24, 1603,
exactly a month before the great queen passed away. The mother of the
immortal Dreamer was one Margaret Bentley, who, like her husband, was a
native of Elstow and only a few months his junior. The details of her
mother's will, which is still extant, drawn up by the vicar of Elstow,
prove that, like her husband, she did not, in the words of Bunyan's
latest and most complete biographer, th