The Act:History Puritan +Restoration Age

 I wrote this blog about writer of Puritan age and Restoration age.

John Bunyan 

John Bunyan was born in Elstow, near Bedford, in 1628, the son of Thomas Bunyan and Margaret Bentley. He followed his father into the tinker’s trade but rebelled against God and ‘had but few equals, both for cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God’. As a teenager, he joined Cromwell’s New Model Army, but continued his rebellious ways. His life was saved on one occasion when a fellow-soldier took his place at the siege of Leicester, and ‘as he stood sentinel he was shot in the head with a musket bullet and died’.

Discharged from the army after three years, Bunyan married a God-fearing woman (whose name is unknown) in 1648, who brought two books to the marriage: The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven (Arthur Dent) and The Practice of Piety (Lewis Bayly). These convicted Bunyan of his sin and he made attempts to reform his life. But he realised that he was lost and without Christ when he came into contact with a group of women whose ‘joyous conversation about the new birth and Christ deeply impressed him’. In 1651 the women introduced him to their pastor in Bedford, John Gifford, who was instrumental in leading Bunyan to repentance and faith.

That same year he moved to Bedford with his wife and four children, including Mary, his firstborn, who had been blind from birth. He was baptised by immersion in the River Ouse in 1653. Appointed a deacon of Gifford’s church, Bunyan’s testimony was used to lead several people to conversion. By 1655 Bunyan was himself preaching to various congregations in Bedford, and hundreds came to hear him. John Owen said of him that he would gladly exchange all his learning for Bunyan’s power of touching men’s hearts.

In the following years, Bunyan began publishing books and became established as a reputable Puritan writer, but around this time, his first wife died. He remarried in 1659, a godly young woman named Elizabeth, who was to be a staunch advocate for her husband during his imprisonments – for in 1660 Bunyan was arrested for preaching without official permission from King Charles II; he was to spend the next 12½ years in Bedford County Gaol.

Although a time of much suffering, Bunyan’s years in prison were productive, for he wrote extensively, with only the Bible and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs beside him, publishing such titles as Christian Behaviour, The Holy City and A Defence of the Doctrine of Justification. Of particular significance for his life-story was Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, which chronicled his life up to the time of his imprisonment.

He was eventually released in 1672, and took up his pastorate in Bedford, having been appointed by the congregation the preceding January. After some fruitful years of ministry, in March of 1675 Bunyan was again imprisoned for preaching publicly without a license. It was during this imprisonment that he began the first part of his most famous book, The Pilgrim’s Progress, which was to sell more than 100,000 copies in its first ten years in print.

Released in 1677, Bunyan spent the last ten years of his life ministering to his congregation and writing, including – Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ (1678), The Life and Death of Mr Badman (1680), The Holy War (1682), and the second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1685). He published ten more books in the last three years of his life, amongst them The Jerusalem Sinner Saved and The Acceptable Sacrifice.

In August 1688, after successfully mediating in a disagreement between a father and son, as he was riding from Reading in Berkshire to London, Bunyan caught a cold and developed a fever. He died at the house of his friend John Strudwick, a grocer and chandler on Snow Hill in Holborn.

John Bunyan Books

John Bunyan did not display a serious love for Christ until after he got married. Then, after a group of women talked to him about Christ, Bunyan was converted by the Lord and was baptized. By 1655, he was preaching. He was imprisoned more than once for preaching without official permission, for about 15 years in total, and he spent much of that time writing. John Bunyan books include his masterpiece, Pilgrim’s Progress, which is widely claimed as the most read book in history, besides the Bible. Christians over the centuries have identified with this allegorical classic that describes each stage of Christian experience. Readers can find the majority of John Bunyan’s books in the outstanding three-volume set, titled The Works of John Bunyan (also available in individual volumes: 1, 2 and 3). This set includes, among others, one of Bunyan’s non-allegorical works; Acceptable Sacrifice, the last book he prepared for publication. In this title, which can be purchased as an individual volume in the Puritan Paperback Series, Bunyan helps readers to discern if they have contrite hearts. Lastly readers interested in Bunyan will want to look at his heart searching treatise, Prayer.

John Dryden

John Dryden was an English poet, critic, and playwright active in the second half of the 17th century. Over the span of nearly 40 years, he dabbled in a wide range of genres to great success and acclaim. As a poet, Dryden is best known as a satirist and was England's first poet laureate in 1668. In addition to satires, Dryden wrote elegies, prologues, epilogues, odes, and panegyrics. His most famous poem is Absalom and Achitophel (1681). Dryden was so influential in Restoration England that the period was known to many as the Age of Dryden.

Born at a vicarage in Northampshire in 1631, Dryden was the son of parliamentary supporters, but exhibited royalist sympathies early. His poem “Upon the Death of Lord Hastings” supports a royalist agenda. Three years after graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge, he moved to London and wrote his "Heroic Stanzas" in 1659. After writing the poem "Annus Mirabilis" in 1667, Dryden was named poet laureate of England.

Dryden wrote plays throughout the 1670s, and was at the forefront of Restoration comedy. His best-known plays were Marriage à la Mode in 1673 and All for Love in 1678. However, his plays were never as successful as his poetry, and he eventually turned back to satires. In the satires that he wrote, Dryden often took aim at the Whigs, which earned him attention from Charles II. In the 1680s, Dryden converted to Catholicism and set to work criticizing the Anglican church, which ultimately lost him the position of Poet Laureate.

At the end of his career, Dryden returned to theatrical writing and also took up translation. He died in 1700 from gout.

Works of John Dryden

Absalom and Achitophel 

“Absalom and Achitophel” is a heroic satire written by John Dryden in 1681-1682. John Dryden is an English poet, playwright, translator, essayist, and literary theorist. Along with Shakespeare and Milton, he is considered as one of the most…

Ah, How Sweet It Is To Love

John Dryden was England's first Poet Laureate (1668) and still remains an influential poet in the British literary canon. He has written some of the most valuable work that has emerged from Restoration England, to the extent that the period was..

Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Music 

"Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Music" is an ode written by John Dryden. It was written in 1697 in celebration of Saint Cecelia's day. The original ode was set to music by the musician Jeremiah Clarke, but, due to its relative obscurity at the.

All for Love

Dryden himself acknowledged that his 1667 play All for Love is an imitation of William Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, which was written in the early 1600s). It is a heroic drama that follows many of the same story beats of Shakespeare's …

Anne Killigrew

The poem To The Pious Memory of the Accomplish'd Young Lady Mrs. Anne Killigrew, published in 1686, is an elegy written by John Dryden in the memory of Anne Killigrew, a British poet who lived between 1660 and 1685.Even if Anne Killigrew is…

Annus Mirabilis

Those who subscribe to such beliefs will confidently assert that one of Nostradamus’ many intricately abstruse quatrains foretells the coming of the Great London Fire of 1666. As far as city-wide conflagrations go, the 1666 blaze that made its way…

Happy the Man

"Happy the Man" is one of John Dryden's most familiar short poems to the modern reader. And yet, this poem is not entirely of his own making. In addition to being a playwright and prodigious creator of unique poetic flights of fancy, Dryden began...

The Hind and the Panther 

The poem "The Hind and the Panther" was written and published in 1687 by Dryden, being an allegory regarding religion. During the time Dryden wrote his poem, he left the Church of England and converted to Catholicism. The poem is the longest poem...

Mac Flecknoe

Mac Flecknoe is one of the four major satires of esteemed English poet John Dryden. The poem is personal satire that has for its target Thomas Shadwell, another poet who had offended Dryden with his aesthetic and political leanings. It is also...

Marriage A-La-Mode 

Marriage à la Mode is widely regarded as John Dryden's most famous play. It was first performed in London by the King's Company in 1673, and centers around two different plots that entangle in a tragicomic web of mistaken identity, romantic...

The Medal 

In 1681, a grand jury was convened in Middlesex to consider a bill of charges filed against the Earl of Shaftesbury on the grounds of having committed high treason. The Earl of Shaftesbury had already been earlier immortalized through his infamous...

The Poetry of John Dryden 

John Dryden was an English poet and playwright and one of the leaders of English classicism. He is best known for his tragedies, prone to exaggerating. He is also known for his satiric works, which served him favorably in the eyes of the audience....

Religio Laici, Or a Layman’s Faith  

British poet laureate John Dryden lived in a time when religious turmoil and political turmoil were intertwined to the point of confusion. The answer to the question of whether you considered yourself a Catholic or a Protestant had the power to...

A Song for St. Cecelia’s Day 

John Dryden’s “A Song for St. Cecilia's Day" is a long-form poem published in 1687, in celebration of a religious holiday commemorating St. Cecilia, a Catholic martyr and patron saint of music and musicians. Dryden, in this poem, celebrates music...

To The Memory of Mr. Oldham 

"To the Memory of Mr. Oldham" is a 1684 poem by the English satirist John Dryden, elegizing the fellow poet John Oldham, who died in 1683. Dryden and Oldham were socially acquainted, making the poem both a tribute to Dryden's departed friend and a…