He had some schooling and, at the age of sixteen, joined the Parliamentary Army at Newport Pagnell during the first stage of the English Civil War.

After the restoration of the monarchy, when the freedom of nonconformists was curtailed, Bunyan was arrested and spent the next twelve years in prison because he refused to give up preaching.

During this time, he wrote a spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, and began work on his most famous book, The Pilgrim's Progress.

[4] Bunyan's father was a brazier or tinker who travelled around the area mending pots and pans, and his grandfather Thomas served as a member of the Elstow Manor court and was a chapman (or small trader).

In Grace Abounding, Bunyan recorded few details of his upbringing, but he did note how he picked up the habit of swearing (from his father), suffered from nightmares, and read the popular stories of the day in cheap chap-books.

[7] That autumn, shortly before or after his sixteenth birthday, Bunyan enlisted in the Parliamentary army when an edict demanded 225 recruits from the town of Bedford.

[9]Bunyan's army service provided him with a knowledge of military language which he then used in his book The Holy War, and also exposed him to the ideas of the various religious sects and radical groups he came across in Newport Pagnell.

[10] The garrison town also gave him opportunities to indulge in the sort of behaviour he would later confess to in Grace Abounding: "So that until I came to the state of Marriage, I was the very ringleader of all the Youth that kept me company, in all manner of vice and ungodliness".

[13] The next few years were a time of intense spiritual conflict for Bunyan as he struggled with his doubts and fears over religion and guilt over what he saw as his state of sin.

"[15] During this time Bunyan, whilst on his travels as a tinker, happened to be in Bedford when he passed a group of women on a doorstep, talking about spiritual matters.

[18] In 1656, having by this time moved his family to St Cuthbert's Street in Bedford, he published his first book, Gospel Truths Opened, which was inspired by a dispute with Ranters and Quakers.

[21] That November, Bunyan was preaching at Lower Samsell, a farm near the village of Harlington, thirteen miles from Bedford, when he was warned that a warrant was out for his arrest.

Bunyan was arrested under the Religion Act 1592, which made it an offence to attend a religious gathering other than at the parish church with more than five people outside their family.

[22] The trial of Bunyan took place in January 1661 at the quarter sessions in Bedford, before a group of magistrates under John Kelynge, who would later help to draw up the Act of Uniformity.

[24] He was sentenced to three months' imprisonment with transportation to follow if at the end of this time he did not agree to attend the parish church and desist from preaching.

[25] As Bunyan refused to agree to give up preaching, his period of imprisonment eventually extended to 12 years and brought great hardship to his family.

Elizabeth, who made strenuous attempts to obtain his release, had been pregnant when her husband was arrested and she subsequently gave birth prematurely to a still-born child.

[26] Left to bring up four step-children, one of whom was blind, she had to rely on the charity of Bunyan's fellow members of the Bedford Meeting and other supporters and on what little her husband could earn in gaol by making shoelaces.

It was in Bedford Gaol that he wrote Grace Abounding and started work on The Pilgrim's Progress, as well as penning several tracts that may have brought him a little money.

[30] By that time there was a mood of increasing religious toleration in the country and in March 1672 the king issued a declaration of indulgence which suspended penal laws against nonconformists.

[32] He continued as pastor of the Bedford Meeting and traveled over Bedfordshire and adjoining counties on horseback to preach, becoming known affectionately as "Bishop Bunyan".

When going to preach in Gamlingay in 1674 he allowed Beaumont, a member of the Bedford Meeting, to ride pillion on his horse, much to the anger of her father, who then died suddenly.

[34][35] In 1688, on his way to London to the house of his friend, grocer John Strudwick of Snow Hill, Bunyan made a detour to Reading, Berkshire, to try and resolve a quarrel between a father and son.

There is a small obelisk and an interpretation board marking his birthplace at Bunyan's End – in a field beside 'Bumpy Lane', which runs northwards from Old Harrowden Road.

There are three scenes from "The Pilgrim's Progress" on the stone plinth: Christian at the wicket gate; his fight with Apollyon; and losing his burden at the foot of the cross of Jesus.

Many critics deem a turning point in Bunyan scholarship to be when poet Robert Southey wrote a lengthy appreciative biography in 1830 to accompany an edition of The Pilgrim's Progress.

[48] Authors who have been influenced by Bunyan include C. S. Lewis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, George Bernard Shaw, William Thackeray, Charlotte Brontë, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and Enid Blyton.