ABSTRACT
Scholars who have studied captives, renegades, and the redeemed have most often focused on these individuals during their time in North America, the Maghrib, and Asia and less frequently on their experiences when they returned home. To a significant extent this bias results from the kinds of sources most readily available. Some of the most familiar of these, such as captivity narratives, often end triumphantly with the individual’s return.1 Other well-known documents, such as sermons for the redemption of captives or readmission of apostates, focus on mercy and penance, not the struggle of repatriation that likely followed.2 Travel literature, another widely examined resource, communicates most effectively the biases and perceptions of British travelers, whose voyages away from home led to reflections on the same.3 Beyond these, however, are the under-utilized archival sources that show less triumph, only half-hearted penance, and the difficulty of re-entering the community in Britain. The following three case studies demonstrate that the local and national community might pardon, accept, or purge members based largely on their kindness to Britons and their loyalty to Christianity and the crown.
