John Bunyan

BUNYAN, John. b. Elstow, Bedfordshire, November 1628 (baptized 30 November); d. London, 31 August 1688. He followed his father, Thomas, in the trade of tinsmith or tinker. His mother died in 1644, and his father quickly remarried: in anger at the rapidity of the new marriage, Bunyan enlisted in the Parliamentary army in 1644. At the siege of Leicester he narrowly escaped death, when a fellow soldier who had asked to take his place on sentry duty was shot and killed. Under the influence of his first wife (he was married before October 1649), he began to read devotional books and the Bible, and to attend Church services. He was greatly affected by overhearing the religious conversation of...