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The events of Bunyans life were played out in 17th century England. It was a time when politics and religion were inextricably intertwined, and both state and church were facing major conflicts.

King James I (who ruled 1603–1625) alienated Parliament with his high-handed methods and declarations of the divine right of kings, seeing no reason why his royal power should be questioned. Under his rule the opposition groups in Parliament united against him, merging lawyers concerned for the traditional common law, and the Puritans desiring to reform the Church of England.

When James’s son Charles I took the throne (1625–1649), the opposition between Parliament and crown was well developed. The issues were debated throughout England in a heated war of pamphlets, with its share of treasonous statements and resulting imprisonments. Parliament enacted the Petition of Right, bringing a number of specific limitations to the king’s power. In opposition, Charles attempted to rule without Parliament —none was called into session from 1629–1640.

Charles I repeatedly offended the religious sensibilities of the Puritans. Though Charles was Anglican, he allowed strong Catholic influences in his court—particularly evident in the priests at his Catholic wife’s chapels, and in artists and artwork from Italy and France. Protestants also resented Charles’s indifference to the Catholic Hapsburg rulers, who were battling Protestantism throughout Europe during the Thirty Years War (1618–1648). Charles’s archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Laud, angered Puritans with his insistence on the Anglo-Catholic liturgy of his Prayer Book and his continual attempts to reform church ritual.

The dispute between King and Parliament, between divine right and common law, between high-churchmen and Puritans escalated. Faced with rebellion in Scotland, and in desperate need of money, Charles was forced to summon Parliament. Parliament asserted its authority, then raised an army against the king.

The English Civil War lasted from 1642 to 1646, pitting the king’s army (known as Cavaliers) against the Parliamentary forces (known as Roundheads). The Parliamentary army included Puritans and other religious dissenters as well as political opponents of the monarchy. (Bunyan served in the Parliamentary army from 1644–1647, though he may have seen no action. This experience exposed him to Puritans and Separatists who took their religious profession seriously.)

Parliament continued to sit during the war, but as its numbers and strength dwindled, control shifted to the Parliamentary army. The Puritan Oliver Cromwell arose as the most capable military and political leader of the Parliamentarian cause.

The Parliamentary forces defeated Charles I, who was tried and executed in 1649. Faced with a divided and ineffective Parliament, Cromwell assumed greater power, establishing an efficient military dictatorship as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth.

Cromwell reformed the courts and the system of taxation, and established a new system of church government. A minister could choose any Puritan system, as long as his congregation would follow, organizing his church along Presbyterian, Independent, or Baptist lines. Any who objected to the system in their parish were free to form separate congregations. Even Jews, who had been banished from England for more than three centuries, were allowed to return. This freedom of worship did not extend, however, to Catholics or high-church Anglicans, whose forms of worship were forbidden. The Puritan concern for godly living became a matter of law, modeled on Calvin’s Geneva—theaters were closed, Sabbath observance was enforced, and moderation in dress and manners was legislated.

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