Bunyan’s Companions in Jail

Bunyan’s companions in the jail at different times during his imprisonment were not mentioned by him in any of his writings directly, but one or two of them may have inspired some of the characters in his works. Fortunately we can learn a little about a few contemporaries from other sources. The prisoners in jail with Bunyan may be put into three different categories. The first is that of the fellow religious prisoners; the second that of the other State prisoners; and the third is that of the ordinary criminal population. There must have been in addition a number of debtors in the jail at the same time, but nothing is known of them.

The religious prisoners can be divided into Quakers and others. The imprisonment of the former is well documented, since there is a section on Bedford in Joseph Besse’s Suffering of the Quakers.Besse records that the persecution of the Quakers started in Bedfordshire in 1655, five years before Bunyan’s imprisonment. Three Quakers were committed to prison by the magistrates at Ampthill to await trial at the next session. ‘When being called in court no legal cause appeared for their commitment, nevertheless their coming in with their hats on was deemed sufficient cause for their recommitment to prison, where they lay about a month longer, and then were privately discharged at a petty session, without any notice taken of the injustice of their confinement.’ It was not only the jail which was used for custodial punishments. In 1656 Isabel Parlour, ‘for exhorting the people in Ampthill Market to repentance and amendment of life, was sent to bridewell with an order to be whipped, and was detained there about a month’.

The earliest minute book of the justices records the imprisonment in 1658 of John Impy and Anne Squire for living in sin. From Besse we learn that this was another case of persecution, since the couple were in fact married according to Quaker custom. In the same year John Rush had his two hogs taken from him by way of distress for not paying his share of the cost of repair to Kempston steeple.