Clayton - CT3207 .C42 1860

ELIZABETH BU 7YAN, after an illness of ten days, with faith and entire reliance, he resigned his soul-on the 31st of August, 1688, being sixty years of age-into the hand of his most merciful Redeemer, " following his Pilgrim from the City of Destruction to the New Jerusalem, his better part having been all along there in holy contemplations, pantings, breathings after the manna and the water of life." He was buried in the family vault of John Strud- wick, in Bunhill Fields, where, against the side of a stone monument on which are recorded many names now almost illegible, a small tablet is inscribed : -"Mr. John Bunyan, Author of the Pilgrim's Progress. Obit 31st August, 1688, vet 60." Elizabeth, his Faithful Helpmate, did not survive her husband long ; she died in 1692. A few months after his death, she published an advertise- ment, saying she desired to print the works which he had left in manuscript, but that she was unable to do so for want of funds. In 1692, a subscriptionwas raised, at the head of which stood the name of John Strudwick, and a folio edition of Bunyan's writings-sixty in number, being one for every year ofhis life-was published. A curious relic of Elizabeth is in existence. It is a shilling of the time of Charles the Second, dated 1663, which was dug up in the Bunyans' garden, and seemed to have been presented by John to his wife as a new coin, having her initials-E.B.-scratched upon it, in characters resembling those of Bunyan, 40

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