John Bunyan was born in 1628 to a poor family who lived at Elstow near Bedford. He was the eldest of the three sons of his father, Thomas Bunyan and his mother Margaret Bentley.Just after 10 years of age, he attended Bedford Grammar School and another school nearby at Houghton Conquest. After a while, he was taken away from school to follow his father’s trade which was being a brazier or tinker.In 1644 when he was just sixteen, his mother died and his father remarried within the year. In November of that year, he was enlisted into the Parliamentary side of the army following the Civil War which had been in progress for two years and was stationed at Newport Pagnell. Up till 1646, he spent most of his military service in garrison duties and there seem to be little evidence to support the fact that he was present at the siege of Leicester in 1645.In 1647, his company was disbanded and he returned to Elstow to practice his trade. Two years after, he married his first wife and in 1650 they had a daughter, Mary who was born blind. After Mary, they had three other children.During a period of four years (1650-1654) he underwent the Spiritual crisis which he later described in his book “Grace Abounding”. It was during this time he came in contact with the Open Communion Church in Bedford whose pastor was an ex Royalist officer by the name of John Gifford. After joining the church in 1655, he discovered that he had the gift of speaking and so in 1656, he began to preach the gospel in his neighbourhood. He became involved in disputes with the local Quakers headed by Edward Burrough and this inspired him to write his first book titled “Some Gospel-Truth Opened”.In 1658, his first wife died and in the following year he married his second wife, Elizabeth. It was in this year that he published his most ambitious theological work “The Doctrine of the Law and Grace”.In 1660, when the persecution of the non-conformists had just started and the penal legislation of the Clarendon code was not yet enacted, he was arrested for preaching to an unauthorised religious service. He was later tried and imprisoned first for three months but because he refused to give up preaching he stayed in prison for twelve years having paroles in between. He was able to support his family whilst in prison by making shoe laces.In 1663, 1665 and 1666, he published three books namely Christian Behaviour, The Holy City and Grace Abounding respectively. He was thought to have written part one of the Pilgrim’s Progress between 1667 and 1672. In March 1672 he was released from prison under Charles II’s first declaration of Indulgence. He was then elected pastor of Bedford church. From that time until he died, he led a very busy life preaching and visiting sister churches as far as London.Early in the year of 1677, he was again imprisoned for six months and in 1678, part one of Pilgrim’s Progress was published followed by publications of The life and Death of Mr. Badman, 1680 and The Holy War in 1682. Two years later in 1684, he published the second part of Pilgrim’s Progress.
On 31st August 1688 at the age of 60, in a home of a friend after contacting fever during a journey by horse from Reading to offer reconciliation in a family dispute, he died and was later buried in Bunhill Fields
