Children of Baal: clergy families and their memories of sequestration during the English Civil War

Fiona McCall investigates memories of the English Civil War as conveyed in stories told by the sons and daughters of loyalist clergy, published in John Walker's The Sufferings of the Clergy (1714). The storytellers recall early lives blighted by violence, poverty, and ostracism. McCall explores their interpretations of these difficult experiences and analyzes tropes common to their narratives. These stories are shown to be an essential component of the tellers' personal, family, and group identity, yet they have the characteristic fractured forms of traumatic memories and are shared only reluctantly.