The publication of Edmund Calamy's Account (1702–1713), on the nonconformist ministers silenced and ejected after the 1660 English Restoration, suggested to Charles Goodall and to Walker a similar work on the deprived and sequestered clergy.
Goodall advertised for information in the London Gazette; finding that Walker was engaged on a similar task, he passed on the materials he had collected.
Walker's book Sufferings of the Clergy appeared in 1714,[3] The subscription list contained over thirteen hundred names.
Walker tried to distinguish doubtful from authenticated matter, and mentions the charges brought against some of his sufferers; but his tone was counter-productive to his argument.
The work was hailed by Thomas Bisse in a sermon before the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy (6 December 1716) as a "book of martyrology" and "a record which ought to be kept in every sanctuary".
A small abridgment of the Attempt, with biographical additions and an introduction by Robert Whittaker, was published in 1863 under the title The Sufferings of the Clergy.