Ferrar

Ferrar, NICHOLAS, born in 1592, at fourteen entered Clare Hall, Cambridge, of which in 1610 he was elected fellow. He studied medicine, and travelled five years on the Continent (1613–18), then engaged in the business of his father, a London merchant, and in 1624 was returned to parliament. But in 1625 he retired to Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, and founded there the religious community familiar to every reader of Mr Shorthouse's John Inglebant; next year Laud ordained him deacon. With his brother and brother-in-law and their families the community numbered some thirty persons, who with constant services and perpetual prayer combined the occupation of fine bookbinding. Nicholas himself died on 4th December 1637, worn out by asceticism; but the 'Arminian Nunnery,' which received two visits from Charles I. (in 1633 and 1642), was not broken up by the Puritans till ten years after his death. See the two items, one by his brother John, edited by Mayor (1855), and Nicholas Ferrar, his Household and his Friends (1892).