Background
He was born in London in 1592. He was the son of Nicholas Ferrar and Mary née Woodnoth. Ferrar was the third son and the fifth child of six.
He was born in London in 1592. He was the son of Nicholas Ferrar and Mary née Woodnoth. Ferrar was the third son and the fifth child of six.
When he was four he was sent to a local school, and the age of five he had been reading perfectly. In 1600 he was sent to boarding school in Berkshire, and in 1605, aged 13, enrolled the Clare Hall in Cambridge and graduated in 1610.
He was obliged for some years to travel for his health, but on returning to England in 1618 became actively connected with the Virginia Company. His brother John had become over extended financially and the Virginia Company was in danger of losing its charter. Nicholas dedicated himself to saving the family fortune and was successful. In Parliament he tried to promote the cause for the Virginia Company. His efforts were in vain for the company lost their charter anyway. After that Nicholas was given credit for founding a Christian community called the English Protestant Nunnery at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, England. Ferrar was given help and support with his semi-religious community by John Collet, as well as Collet s wife and fourteen children. They devoted themselves to a life of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. The community was founded in 1626, when Nicholas was 34 years old. He died on the 4th of December 1637, and the house was despoiled and the community broken up ten years later. There are extant a number of "harmonies" of the Gospel, printed and bound by the community, two of them by Ferrar himself. One of the latter was made for Charles I. on his request, after a visit in 1633 to see the "Arminian Nunnery at Little Gidding, " which had been the subject of some scandalous - and undeserved criticism.
Nicholas Ferrar is commemorated in the calendar of the Church of England on 4 December, the date of his death. In the calendar of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America he is commemorated on 1 December.
T. S. Eliot honoured Nicholas Ferrar in the Four Quartets, naming one of the quartets Little Gidding. The Friends of Little Gidding was founded in 1946 by Alan Maycock with the patronage of T. S. Eliot, to maintain and adorn the church at Little Gidding, and to honour the life of Nicholas Ferrar and his family and their life in the village. The Friends organise an annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Nicholas Ferrar each July, and celebrate Nicholas Ferrar Day on 4 December.
A new religious community was founded at Little Gidding in the 1970s, inspired by the example of Ferrar. That group, calling itself the Community of Christ the Sower, ended in 1998.
When he decided to devote himself to a religious life he purchased the manor of Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, where he organized a small religious community. Here, in 1626, he was ordained a deacon by Laud, and declining preferment, he lived an austere, almost monastic life of study and good works.
When the Virginia Company was deprived of its patent in 1623 Ferrar turned his attention to politics, and was elected to parliament.
Ferrar suffered from poor health and was advised to travel to continental Europe, and away from the damp air of Cambridge.
