In November 1817, Ladies' Monthly Museum informed its readers that 'the celebrated John Bunyan, author of the Pilgrim's Progress, at one period of his life, kept a public house in the neighbourhood of Turvey, in Bedfordshire, and, perhaps, in commemoration of the profession of his father, and his own in his youth, put up the sign of the Tinker of Turvey'. It comes as a surprise to discover that the reputation of John Bunyan (1628-88), Puritan minister and author of a religious classic, could encompass the innkeeper's trade in the nineteenth century, often regarded as the era of his greatest fame as a spiritual writer. The story of Bunyan the taverner provides a welcome reminder that nothing can be taken for granted about this established and canonical author of the English-speaking world. To explore the Bunyan tradition is to encounter centuries of accumulated legend, polemic and prejudice that began to spread even during his lifetime, for Bunyan was accused of being a witch, a highwayman, a Jesuit, a gypsy and a whoremaster. Some even said he had murdered the father of Agnes Beaumont, falsely charged with being his mistress. Several of these accusations are recorded in his spiritual autobiography Grace Abounding (1666), and were evidently well known to him. They bury the traditional picture of Bunyan the stern and puritanical minister as surely as the image of the tinker of Turvey serving ale obscures the religious allegorist of The Pilgrim's Progress (1678). Hence it is right that the works of this contentious figure are still widely read and taught. With this in mind, the present Companion has been designed to serve three major purposes for a broad constituency of readers.

For most of his life, John Bunyan was despised. To clergymen of the Church of England he embodied the worst kind of sectarian fanaticism, and he was repeatedly accused of being a tinker, an 'emblem of lower-class vulgarity, drunkenness and promiscuity'. Charges of ignorance, dishonesty, blasphemy, fanaticism and heresy were levelled against him, and when he challenged the Anglican Edward Fowler his writings were compared to the 'brutish barkings' of a dog. There were concerns that the 'Fury' of such an ignorant 'Pestilent Schismatick' might infect the true doctrine of the English Church and Bunyan's right to preach was quickly challenged. He had to contend just as much with the dissenters. His dispute with the Quakers began with his first printed works: Some Gospel-truths Opened (1656) and his response to its critics, A Vindication of . . . Some Gospel-Truths Opened (1657). In the eyes of George Fox, one of his later antagonists, Bunyan was a liar and a false prophet whose principles were inconsistent, just as his judgement was erratic. Bunyan's reputation did not improve in 1659 when he was supposed to have supported, in print, the slanders of a Cambridgeshire woman, Margaret Pryor, who accused a Quaker widow of bewitching her and of changing her into a mare (Bunyan's pamphlet on the matter has not survived, if indeed it was ever written). Pryor was soon exposed as a lewd drunkard, the accused woman was acquitted by a jury in fifteen minutes and the accusation of witchcraft was turned against Bunyan. Even the Baptists thought Bunyan to be a traitor.