BUNYAN, JOHN (1628–1688), English Nonconformist and author of The Pilgrim's Progress. The son of a brazier, John Bunyan was born in the village of Elstow, near Bedford, and may have attended a local grammar school. During the Civil War he served with the parliamentary forces at Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, where he came into contact with various religious sects. In the early 1650s he underwent prolonged spiritual turmoil, at the nadir of which he was convinced that he had betrayed Christ by allying himself with the devil. About 1655 Bunyan joined the open-communion Baptist church at Bedford, whose pastor was John Gifford, a former royalist officer. Some members of the congregation were sympathetic to the tenets of the Fifth Monarchists, a radical millenarian group to which Bunyan himself was apparently attracted for a time.

Bunyan launched his career as a preacher and prolific author before the monarchy and the...