It was a Sunday in 1643, and the glacier of society was about to split.

For years, the king’s relationship with Parliament had festered: now, the political situation was gangrenous. Conflict, like melting ice, had already started to trickle into the villages. Already, families’ loyalties were split between Royalists and Parlimentarians. Soon, conflict would become a flood: untold thousands would die in battle. But God’s faithfulness, proclaimed in so many churches that Sunday, would be a rock in the flood. It was the eve of the English Civil War, and conflict was already trickling like ice into towns and villages.

In London, two pastors in their churches were preaching. In the village of Elstow, a rebellious teenager was fidgeting in his pew.

War was coming.

One would be a soldier, one a conspirator and one simply a survivor. The war’s end would be only the beginning of their fight for survival – but through the turbulence of the seventeenth century, each one would experience God’s hand at work in his life. Each, in God’s strength, would one day be a rock in a stormy sea.

Grim news, like melting ice, had already started to trickle into towns and villages. As congregations gathered to worship, few knew that this was the eve of the English Civil War.

On this Sunday, each of our three sat in church.

The whisper of war trickled like melting ice into the cities and villages.

War is coming. Samuel Annesley, standing in his pulpit, knew it. He was a tall man in the dark robes of a Puritan, stood in his pulpit. He lived and breathed the Bible: from childhood, he had read twenty chapters daily. A formidable frame, it is said that even in the frigid London winters, he had no need of hat, gloves or fire to warm him. Surveying the sea of faces, he knew that many would soon go to war, leaving empty pews behind them.

War is coming. William Jenkyn knew it. He, too, was a London pastor standing before his congregation — a man of less robust health. Born into wealth, he had lost his father early and was sent to Cambridge at fourteen, he gained a reputation for quick learning and strong faith. Life had sped by smoothly: now, a married man in his thirties, he was a well-established London vicar. Like Annesley, he was preparing to pastor a diminished congregation.

War is coming. The folk in the rural villages knew it – although some had other priorities. In Elstow, a tinker's son fidgeted in the pew of a village church, his mind on the ball games that awaited him that afternoon. He was well known in Elstow as the foul-mouthed lad, breaker of the Sabbath. At sixteen, he would have scoffed at the very idea of becoming a pastor. His name was John Bunyan.

Within days, ball games would be forgotten and he would be launched into the brutality of seventeenth century warfare. Within days, Annesley and Jenkyn would be preaching to pews empty of able-bodied men.

Annesley, Jenkyn and Bunyan — two pastors, and one highly unlikely candidate — each [would be] an instrument of God.

War. Officially, it began on […] 1643. The standard was raised at […] in torrential rain, signalling the start of a long and bloody conflict.

In London, Annesley and Jenkyn, with empty spaces in their churches’ pews where the able-bodied men would have sat, settled in to support the remainder of their congregations.

As for John Bunyan, barely sixteen, he had been called into the ranks. Launched into the chaos of battle, he fought through the smoke of muskets, ignored the screams — survived, and settled into the rhythm of war, as suddenly empty beds in the barracks told their own dreadful story.

Once, as John prepared to stand sentinel, a soldier tapped him on the shoulder, offering to exchange duties with him — but on sentry duty in John’s place, he was shot dead. Throughout his childhood, John had been terrorised by nightmares of hell; now, lying awake in the barracks, he had unsettling questions to grapple with: why should he have survived, and his friend killed?

Years passed and war dragged on. The armies were ravaged by battle; at home, civilians were ravaged by siege and starvation. In total, five hundred thousand were killed. John survived. In London, Annesley and Jenkyn soldiered on in their parishes.

Then, [DATE] suddenly, war eased.

The news came that King Charles had been captured. His lifelong stubborn streak had had catastrophic consequences during the civil war. He was considered responsible for the deaths of […], and — staggeringly — the Parlimentarians proclaimed him not only a “man of blood”, but a traitor against his own people. And treason could not go unpunished.

New Year 1649 came and went. In war-torn England, another Sunday came: congregations gathered in their churches.

In captivity, Charles I ate and drank communion. He was preparing for execution. His death warrant had been signed by the former farmer Oliver Cromwell. The tables had turned, and the king’s head was cut off on the bitingly cold morning of January 29th, 1649.

Summing up the revolutionary nature of the execution, Cromwell wrote that the king’s head had been cut off 'with the crown on it'. This was a symbolic image symbolised the ultimate goal of the execution: beyond killing a single tyrant, they aimed to incinerate the whole institution of monarchy. A nationwide day of thanksgiving was called.

The beheading of a man brought up to see himself as God’s anointed ruler ignited controversy. Many Puritans, including John Owen, considered the regicides to be 'God’s workmen': they had rid England of a tyrant.

However, not all Puritans saw alike. Angry words were hurled in all directions. Samuel Annesley, standing tall in his pulpit, thundered out against the execution and denounced Cromwell as one of the worst hypocrites ever to pester the church.

As for William Jenkyn, he refused to take part in the mandatory thanksgiving service. His punishments included Cromwell’s suspicion, a termination of his ministry and an order of banishment: he was dispatched to live no less than twenty miles from London.

However, the fiery controversy seemed far removed from Elstow, where John Bunyan — now a married man — worked as a tinker. He had a close relationship with his first daughter, born blind. Since marriage, it seemed that he had scrubbed his life squeaky clean: no more swearing, no more games on Sundays. Villagers marvelled at his transformation. But as John Bunyan worked, isolated in the smoke of his forge, only he knew that nothing had changed inside. Guilt, and fear of hell, were tearing him apart.

Village life ticked on, and his family grew. Pastoral counsel, a book of Martin Luther’s sermons and church fellowship saw John turn his life over to God — but he struggled with crippling doubt. The lightbulb moment came as he walked through nearby fields: God’s grace was sufficient; his salvation rested in Jesus’ sacrifice, not his own works. In Bunyan’s own words, “Now did my chains fall from my legs indeed, and I went home rejoicing, for the grace and love of God.” This time, the transformation was total: within years, encouraged by his fellowship, Bunyan had begun preaching.

Perhaps the unlikeliest candidate for ministry, he proves that God’s choice of instruments might surprise.

The war was over – for England and for Bunyan.

Our three pastors had survived the nightmare of civil war. On the whole, the years of Cromwell’s Protectorate passed smoothly, with pastors like Annesley preaching on a daily basis.

Years passed peacefully. but storm clouds were gathering. War of a different kind loomed on the horizon, war that would prove more deadly: war on nonconformity.s

Cromwell’s Protectorate ended with his death in 1658. Two years later, to Jenkyn’s delight, the monarchy was restored: the late king’s son was brought back from exile in France and proclaimed King Charles II. He intended to stand for religious toleration, but his cabinet had other plans. In 1662, they cemented their stranglehold over nonconformity: under the terms of the Exclusion Act, all those unwilling to swear allegiance to the Anglican Church would have their preaching licenses removed.

Jenkyn, Annesley and Bunyan were among the […] ejected from the official church, finding it against their conscience to conform with Anglican principles. A new chapter of their lives began: wanted men, preaching in secrecy, sought out by spies.

John Bunyan held clandestine meetings in barns, fields and forests. For the crime of preaching without a license, he was arrested and imprisoned.

William Jenkyn, now rejected by the king he had once plotted to restore, left for the countryside – but this time, not to plot, but to preach. Hertfordshire became the new centre of his ministry, and by all accounts, he thrived.

continued to preach. A group of soldiers once burst into a meeting he was leading, but no arrest was made. He wrote a famous commentary on Jude, that Spurgeon would describe two hundred years later as […]

When Samuel Annesley’s inevitable arrest warrant was issued, no less than three thousand armed men turned up to defend his meetings. His house was raided — nevertheless, he was able to continue preaching. The young Daniel Defoe, a member of Annesley’s congregation, was deeply influenced by the fortitude of this pastor under fire; later he wrote that Annesley was “[c]heerful in pain, and thankful in distress.” At home, his family grew and grew until the Annesleys were parents, in his words, to no less than ‘a quarter of a hundred’ children!

The situation for nonconformists ebbed and flowed with the seasons, and there were reprieves: in 1674, a brief period of religious toleration enabled Annesley’s congregation to emerge from secrecy and build their own meeting-house. His family grew: […] Bunyan, a survivor of prison for twelve years, could finally breathe fresh air.

Then the waters rose.

Up until now, William Jenkyn had escaped spies and soldiers – until the day that he joined other pastors at a fateful prayer meeting. When the authorities pounded on the door, the other pastors hurried through the ‘emergency exit’ – but a woman was blocking the door, and Jenkyn hesitated, unwilling to trample on her skirt. Chivalry cost him his life. He was caught and thrown into prison, where his health collapsed. For the elderly Jenkyn, the squalor of the prison was equal to a death sentence, and it was there, in a cold January, that he died.

Allegedly, King Charles was informed that Jenkyn had been given his liberty by one 'greater than your Majesty: the King of Kings'. It is said that Charles 'seemed struck, and remained silent'.

The king himself had only a month to live. In February 1685, Charles was replaced by his Catholic brother James, whose reign proved equally disastrous for nonconformists. the Earl of Monmouth (the king’s nephew) launched a rebellion. Nonconformists flocked to his army, hoping that if they could install the Protestant Monmouth as king, they could finally worship in peace — but the rebellion was brutally quashed, and William Jenkyn’s son, aged twenty-two, was among the rebels hanged.

Those were dark days, but shafts of light still broke through the prison windows. John Bunyan, having been imprisoned for twelve years in total, crafted shoelaces in his cell to support his family — and wrote his famous allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, with its familiar opening: “As I slept, I dreamed a dream …”

And what a dream! From the stench of a crowded prison cell, his pen created an expansive world. Much of it is true to his own experience: dark valleys, moments of doubt and despair, seasons of persecution. prison, martyrs. the pilgrim travels by Giant Despair’s dungeon. And yet the Straight and Narrow Way leads the pilgrim through fire, flood and also fields of flowers — leading finally to the golden City where all will be made new.

Bunyan’s life ended in 1688, and he was buried in Bunhill Fields, where Jenkyn had been buried four years earlier. Samuel Annesley reached the end of his pilgrimage in 1698, having survived eighty-five turbulent years. He died at home (where his family had to restrain him from preaching daily).

Three years after Jenkyn’s death, Bunyan too would be lowered into a Bunhill grave. Annesley’s twenty-fifth and final daughter, Susannah, would be buried there too: those attending the burial would include her sons John and Charles Wesley.

Each in their own ways, Annesley, Jenkyn and Bunyan were radical men in a radical age. Bunyan the soldier, Jenkyn the conspirator, Annesley the survivor. They had seen a more peaceful England under Cromwell. Finally, under the reinstitute monarchy, they faced a storm of persecution — but it was this period of rolling seas that highlighted God’s work in their lives.

Daniel Defoe, then a young man, was among the parishioners influenced by Samuel Annesley’s faith and fortitude, and it is from the elegy he wrote for his pastor that the poem we began with comes:

“Firm as the rocks in rolling seas abide,

When floods of doubts and dangers pass beside.”

Each had proved God’s faithfulness — Annesley in his ministry, Bunyan in his captivity and Jenkyn most powerfully in his death.

Perhaps we should permit Jenkyn, possibly the least known of these three men, to have the last word. Despite the tragic circumstances surrounding his life and death, he knew the truth of what he preached – and centuries later, his words that rang triumphant in the cold prison still ring true today:

Before his death, an ex-conspirator in the stench of a prison, could breathe in with the peace that passes understanding.

These were his words, ringing out triumphantly at the end of a turbulent life, ringing equally true today:

“Christ lives: he is my friend; a friend born for adversity; a friend that never dies.”