Bunyan Dies

1688

John Bunyan, the tinker-preacher whose Pilgrim's Progress had become second only to the Bible in English Protestant homes, died in London at fifty-nine after riding through a rainstorm to reconcile a father and son. Twenty-two of his books remained in print. Plainspoken Puritan literature lost its greatest voice, and the allegory he had written in a Bedford jail endured as a masterpiece.