Byfield was a chaplain attached to the Parliamentary forces in Cambridge, and quarters were assigned to him in Jesus College, in the first floor room above the gate of entrance. Below his chamber was the Porter’s lodge, which at that time served as the armoury of the troopers who occupied the college. Above it, on the highest floor of the gate-tower “kept” Thomas Allen. These were the only rooms on the staircase. At the beginning of the Long Vacation of 1643 Allen was the only member of the college who continued to reside. Some light is thrown on the character of Byfield and his connection with this story by a pudgy volume of old sermons of the Commonwealth period which is contained in the library of the college. Among the sermons which are bound up in it is one which bears the date 1643 and is designated on the title page: A FAITHFUL ADMONICION of the Baalite sin of _Enchanters & Stargazers_, preacht to the Colonel Cromwell’s Souldiers in Saint Pulcher’s (_i.e._ Saint Sepulchre’s) church, in Cambridge, by the fruitfull Minister, _Adoniram Byfield_, late departed unto God, in the yeare 1643, touching that of _Acts_ the seventh, verse 43, _Ye took up the Tabernacle of Moloch, the Star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them; & I will carrie you away beyond Babylon_. The discourse, in its title as in its contents, reveals its author as one of the fanatics who wrought on the ignorance and prejudice against “carnal” learning which actuated the Cromwellian soldiers in their brutal usage of the University “scholars” in 1643. All Byfield’s learning was contained in one book--_the_ Book. For him the revelation which gave it sufficed for its interpretation. What needed Greek to the man who spoke mysteries in unknown tongues, or the light of comment to him who was carried in the spirit into the radiance of the third heaven?