A lineal descendant
of his was living, in 1847, at Islington, near London, aged eighty-four, Mrs.
Senegar, a fine hearty old lady, and a Strict Baptist. She said to me, 'Sir,
excuse the vanity of an old woman, but I will show you how I sometimes spend a very
pleasant half-hour.' She took down a portrait on canvas of her great forefather
and propped it up on the table with a writing desk, with a looking glass by its
side. 'There, Sir, I look at the portrait, and then at myself, and can trace
every feature; we resemble each other like two pins.' 'Excepting the imperial
and mustachios,' I replied; to which she readily assented. It was the fact that
there was a striking family likeness between the picture and her reflection in
the looking glass. Another descendant, from the same branch of the family, is
now living at Lincoln. He was born in 1775 and possessed a quarto Bible,
published by Barker and Bill in 1641, given by John Bunyan to his son Joseph.
This was preserved in his family until the present year, when it came into the editor's possession, with the following relics, which were. I trust will yet be preserved with the greatest care:—An iron encase, made by Bunyan the brazier, with some stumps of old pens, with which it is said he wrote some of his sermons and books; the buckles worn by him, and his two pocket-knives, one of them made before springs were invented, and which is kept open by turning a ferrule; his apple-scoop, curiously carved, and a seal; his pocket-box of scales and weights for money, being stamped with the figures on each side of the coins of James and Charles I. These were given by Robert Bunyan, in 1839, then sixty-four years of age, to a younger branch of the family, Mr. Charles Robinson, of Wilford, near Nottingham (his sister's son), for safe custody. He died in 1852; his aged uncle remains in good health, subject to the infirmities of his seventy-eighth year.
On many of the blank spaces in the Bible are the registers
of births and deaths in the family, evidently written at the time. Those relics
are deposited in a carved oak box. They were sold with the late Mr. Robinson's
effects, January 1853, and secured for me by my excellent friend James Dix,
Esq., of Bristol, who met with them immediately after the sale, on one of his
journeys at Nottingham. They are not worshipped as relics, nor have they
performed miracles, but as curiosities of a past age they are worthy of high
consideration. Everything that was used by him, and that survives the ravages
of time, possesses a peculiar charm; even the chair in which he at is preserved
in the vestry of the new chapel and is shown to those who make the pilgrimage
to the shrine of Bunyan.
In the same vestry is
also a curiously inlaid cabinet, small, and highly finished. It descended from
Bunyan to a lady who lived to an advanced age—Madam Bithray; from her to the
Rev. Mr. Voley; and of his widow it was purchased to ornament the vestry of
Bunyan's meeting house.
The personal
appearance and character of our pilgrim's guide, drawn by his friend Charles
Doe, will be found at the end of his Grace Abounding; to which is appended his
Dying Sayings—'of sin—afflictions—repentance and coming to Christ—of prayer—of
the Lord's day, sermons, and weekdays: "Make the Lord's day the market
for thy soul"—of the love of the world—of suffering—of death and
judgment—of the joys of heaven—and the torments of hell.'
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