Even before this he had been drafted for service in the battles which were aflame in England--doubtless fighting for the Commonwealth, as most of his biographers[84] allege. Very probably, too, he was under orders of that Sir Samuel Luke, who lived near by, and who--as I have mentioned--was the butt of much of Samuel Butler’s Hudibrastic satire. Next we hear of him as preacher--not properly sanctioned even by the non-conforming authorities--but opening that intense religious talk of his upon whatever and whomsoever would come to hear. Even his friendly Baptist brothers look doubtfully upon his irregularities; but he sees only the great golden cross before him in the skies, and hears only the crackle of the flames in the nethermost depths below. He is bound to save, in what way he can, those who will be saved, and to warn, in fearfullest way, those who will be damned. Hundreds came to hear this working-man who was so dreadfully in earnest, and who had no more respect for pulpits or liturgies than for preaching-places in the woods. It was not strange that he offended against non-conformist acts, nor strange that, after accession of Charles II. he came to imprisonment for his illegal pieties. This prison-life lasted for some twelve years, in the which he still preached to those who would listen within prison walls, and read his Bible, and wrought at tagged laces (still a great industry of that district) for the support of his family, a separation from whom--most of all from his poor blind daughter Mary--was, he says, like “pulling the flesh from his bones.” Over and over in that reach of prison-life he might have been free if he would have promised to abstain from his irregular preachments, or if he would go over seas to America. But he would not; he could not forbear to warn whomsoever might hear, of the fiery pit, and of the days when the heavens should be opened. He loved not the thought of over-ocean crossing; his duties lay near; and with all his radicalism he never outlived a gracious liking for British kingly traditions, and for such ranking of men and powers as belonged to Levitical story. Finally, under Charles’ Declaration of Indulgence (1672), which was intended more for the benefit of ill-used Romanists than for Non-conformists, Bunyan’s prison-doors were laid open, and he went to his old work of preaching in public places. There may have been, as his more recent biographers intimate, a later (1675) short imprisonment;[85] and this, or some portion of the previous prison-life, was certainly passed in that ancient Bedford jail, which, only a few years since, was standing on Bedford bridge, hanging over the waters of the river Ouse--whose slow current we shall find flowing again in our story of William Cowper.