At the time that death surprised him, Bunyan had gained no small celebrity in London as a popular preacher, and approached the nearest to a position of worldly honour. Though we must probably reject the idea that he ever filled the office of Chaplain to the Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Shorter, the fact that he is styled "his Lordship's teacher" proves that there was some relation more than that of simple friendship between the chief magistrate and the Bedford minister. But the society of the great was never congenial to him. If they were godly as well as great, he would not shrink from intercourse, with those of a rank above his own, but his heart was with his own humble folk at Bedford. Worldly advancement he rejected for his family as well as for himself. A London merchant, it is said, offered to take his son Joseph into his house of business without the customary premium. But the offer was declined with what we may consider an overstrained independence. "God," he said, "did not send me to advance my family but to preach the gospel." "An instance of other-worldliness," writes Dr. Brown, "perhaps more consistent with the honour of the father than with the prosperity of the son." Bunyan's end was in keeping with his life. He had ever sought to be a peacemaker and to reconcile differences, and thus had "hindered many mishaps and saved many families from ruin." His last effort of the kind caused his death. The father of a young man in whom he took an interest, had resolved, on some offence, real or supposed, to disinherit his son. The young man sought Bunyan's mediation. Anxious to heal the breach, Bunyan mounted his horse and took the long journey to the father's house at Reading--the scene, as we have noticed, of his occasional ministrations--where he pleaded the offender's cause so effectually as to obtain a promise of forgiveness. Bunyan returned homewards through London, where he was appointed to preach at Mr. Gamman's meeting-house near Whitechapel. His forty miles' ride to London was through heavy driving rain. He was weary and drenched to the skin when he reached the house of his "very loving friend," John Strudwick, grocer and chandler, at the sign of the Star, Holborn Bridge, at the foot of Snow Hill, and deacon of the Nonconformist meeting in Red Cross Street. A few months before Bunyan had suffered from the sweating sickness. The exposure caused a return of the malady, and though well enough to fulfil his pulpit engagement on Sunday, the 19th of August, on the following Tuesday dangerous symptoms declared themselves, and in ten days the disease proved fatal. He died within two months of completing his sixtieth year, on the 31st of August, 1688, just a month before the publication of the Declaration of the Prince of Orange opened a new era of civil and religious liberty, and between two and three months before the Prince's landing in Torbay. He was buried in Mr. Strudwick's newly-purchased