![Portrait of Mary Ferrar 1617](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Portrait_of_Mary_Ferrar_1617.jpg)
Mary Ferrar (1551 – 1634) was the
matriarch
Matriarchy is a social system in which women hold the primary power positions in roles of authority. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege and control of property.
While those definitions apply in general E ...
of the Ferrar family who with her son
Nicholas Ferrar
Nicholas Ferrar (22 February 1592 – 4 December 1637) was an English scholar, courtier and businessman, who was ordained a deacon in the Church of England. He lost much of his fortune in the Virginia Company and retreated with his extended fami ...
founded the
Little Gidding religious community in
Huntingdonshire
Huntingdonshire (; abbreviated Hunts) is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire and a historic county of England. The district council is based in Huntingdon. Other towns include St Ives, Godmanchester, St Neots and Ramsey. The popul ...
in 1625.
Early life and family
She was born in 1551 as Mary Wodenoth (or Woodnoth), daughter of Lawrence Wodenoth, Esq., of Savington Hall, Cheshire and grew up on the family estate.
[Joyce Ransome]
''The Web of Friendship: Nicholas Ferrar and Little Gidding''
James Clarke and Co, Cambridge (2011) - Google Books Described as a "woman of fervent piety and a model mother", in 1581 at
St Gabriel Fenchurch
St Gabriel Fenchurch (or Fen Church as recorded on the Ordnance Survey) was a parish church in the Langbourn Ward of the City of London, destroyed in the Great Fire of London and not rebuilt.
History
The church stood between Rood Lane and Min ...
in London she married Nicholas Ferrar the Elder (1546-1620), a merchant of London, Master of the Skinners' Company and an investor in the
Virginia Company
The Virginia Company was an English trading company chartered by King James I on 10 April 1606 with the object of colonizing the eastern coast of America. The coast was named Virginia, after Elizabeth I, and it stretched from present-day Main ...
who traded very extensively with the East and West Indies. He was interested in the adventures of Hawkins, Drake and Raleigh.
[ With him she had six children:
*Susanna Ferrar (1583-1657), who married John Collett, of Bourn Bridge, Cambridgeshire
*Erasmus Ferrar (1586-1613), a barrister-of-law
*]John Ferrar
John Ferrar (2 December 1588 – 28 December 1657) was a London merchant and brother of Nicholas Ferrar the Younger.This John Ferrar is not to be confused with John Ferrar the Elder of Croxton and London, Esquire, father of Councillor William Far ...
(1588–1657), a London merchant and Deputy Governor and Treasurer of the Virginia Company of London
The London Company, officially known as the Virginia Company of London, was a division of the Virginia Company with responsibility for colonizing the east coast of North America between latitudes 34° and 41° N.
History Origins
The territor ...
[This John Ferrar is not to be confused with John Ferrar the Elder of Croxton and London, Esquire, father of Councillor William Farrar]
*Nicholas Ferrar
Nicholas Ferrar (22 February 1592 – 4 December 1637) was an English scholar, courtier and businessman, who was ordained a deacon in the Church of England. He lost much of his fortune in the Virginia Company and retreated with his extended fami ...
(1592-1637), a scholar, courtier
A courtier () is a person who attends the royal court of a monarch or other royalty. The earliest historical examples of courtiers were part of the retinues of rulers. Historically the court was the centre of government as well as the official r ...
, businessman and ordained deacon
A deacon is a member of the diaconate, an office in Christian churches that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions. Major Christian churches, such as the Catholic Churc ...
in the Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...
*William Ferrar (1594-1637)
*Richard Farrar (1596-1637).[''Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography'', Volume 1, Lewis Historical Publishing Company, New York (1915) p. 24] According to biographers of Nicholas Ferrar the youngest son Richard Ferrar was a wastrel who to spite his father changed the spelling of his name to Farrar and took no interest in the family's interests in Virginia.
According to the biography of Nicholas Ferrar in 1631 Mary was "a tall, straight, deep complexioned, grave matron, of eighty years of age".
Little Gidding
In 1620 Esmé Stewart, the Earl of March (1579–1624) and Lord Lieutenant of Huntingdonshire (later, briefly, the 3rd Duke of Lennox), sold the manor of Little Gidding
Little Gidding is a small village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. It lies approximately northwest of Huntingdon, near Sawtry, within Huntingdonshire, which is a district of Cambridgeshire as well as a historic county.
A small p ...
to Thomas Sheppard. The Ferrars and Wodenoths were investors in the Virginia Company
The Virginia Company was an English trading company chartered by King James I on 10 April 1606 with the object of colonizing the eastern coast of America. The coast was named Virginia, after Elizabeth I, and it stretched from present-day Main ...
and other colonial projects[ and when the Virginia Company collapsed in 1624 taking with it a large portion of their fortune ]John Ferrar
John Ferrar (2 December 1588 – 28 December 1657) was a London merchant and brother of Nicholas Ferrar the Younger.This John Ferrar is not to be confused with John Ferrar the Elder of Croxton and London, Esquire, father of Councillor William Far ...
faced financial ruin.[ Mary Ferrar realised that a home needed to be found for her family. She looked at ]Little Gidding
Little Gidding is a small village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. It lies approximately northwest of Huntingdon, near Sawtry, within Huntingdonshire, which is a district of Cambridgeshire as well as a historic county.
A small p ...
and the population having declined in this rural area Sheppard sold the practically derelict property to Mary's son Nicholas Ferrar
Nicholas Ferrar (22 February 1592 – 4 December 1637) was an English scholar, courtier and businessman, who was ordained a deacon in the Church of England. He lost much of his fortune in the Virginia Company and retreated with his extended fami ...
and her nephew Arthur Wodenoth
Arthur Wodenoth or Woodnoth (c.1594–1645) was an English goldsmith and colonial pioneer, a member of the Virginia Company and Somers Islands Company.
Life
He was born about 1594, the son of John Wodenoth of Shavington and his wife Jane Touche ...
(or Woodnoth) (c1590–c1650) in 1625 as trustees for Mary Ferrar, using her dower to purchase the property on her behalf. Here, after considerable renovation, the Ferrar family retreated to take on a humble, spiritual life of prayer, eschewing material, worldly life.[
In 1625 during a period of plague in London Mary Ferrar took refuge with her daughter Susanna Collet near ]Bourn
Bourn is a small village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire, England. Surrounding villages include Caxton, Eltisley and Cambourne. It is 8 miles (12 km) from the county town of Cambridge. The population of the parish was 1,015 people ...
in Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and North ...
, and the following year as Mary herself moved into Little Gidding after it had been made somewhat more habitable she persuaded her daughter and her family to join her. The popular wisdom of the time was that it took a man and a woman to successfully run a household in the persons of a husband and wife, and while it was not unusual for women to be the head of a family or to own property in the 17th-century, the situation at Little Gidding was rather more unconventional as not only did the widowed Mary Ferrar share responsibility for the community with her unmarried son but two other adult males (and their families) also submitted to her authority in the persons of her son John Ferrar
John Ferrar (2 December 1588 – 28 December 1657) was a London merchant and brother of Nicholas Ferrar the Younger.This John Ferrar is not to be confused with John Ferrar the Elder of Croxton and London, Esquire, father of Councillor William Far ...
and son-in-law John Collet.[
Between 1625 and 1629 Nicholas Ferrar spent much of his time in London and in 1626 he was ordained as a ]Deacon
A deacon is a member of the diaconate, an office in Christian churches that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions. Major Christian churches, such as the Catholic Churc ...
by William Laud
William Laud (; 7 October 1573 – 10 January 1645) was a bishop in the Church of England. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Charles I in 1633, Laud was a key advocate of Charles I's religious reforms, he was arrested by Parliament in 1640 ...
(1573–1645) then Bishop of St David's
The Bishop of St Davids is the Ordinary (officer), ordinary of the Church in Wales Diocese of St Davids.
The succession of bishops stretches back to Saint David who in the 6th century established his seat in what is today the St Davids, city of ...
and later Archbishop of Canterbury
The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justi ...
.["A brief history of Little Gidding"](_blank)
(The Official Website of St John's Church, Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire, England). Retrieved 4 January 2013.
Soon the small community was joined by Mary's son John Ferrar
John Ferrar (2 December 1588 – 28 December 1657) was a London merchant and brother of Nicholas Ferrar the Younger.This John Ferrar is not to be confused with John Ferrar the Elder of Croxton and London, Esquire, father of Councillor William Far ...
and his family. Mary and her son Nicholas worked closely together to ensure the smooth running of their community and during his absence in London Nicholas Ferrar wrote frequent letters to ensure that his strong-willed mother's wishes were heeded and acted upon as the owner of the property. She, for her part, valued his wisdom and vision and through her affection for him often deferred to his opinion.[ The extended Ferrar family numbering about 40 people transformed their holdings at Little Gidding into a humble ]Anglican
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...
religious community. When they purchased it, the property consisted of a decayed manor house and the village's medieval parish church of St John which had not been worshipped in for 60 years.[Clive Aslet]
''Villages of Britain: The Five Hundred Villages that Made the Countryside''
Bloomsbury (2010) - Google Books pp. 252-254 The Ferrars began repairing the site, with Mary's first priority being the church, which had been desecrated through use as a barn and which was so full of hay that at first she was unable to enter to pray. By 1629 it was fully restored. During this period Mary Ferrar commenced a series of charitable works among the local community, endowing an almshouse
An almshouse (also known as a bede-house, poorhouse, or hospital) was charitable housing provided to people in a particular community, especially during the medieval era. They were often targeted at the poor of a locality, at those from certain ...
in the form of a large room in her house for four elderly local widows who were regarded as part of the household and joined the daily prayers. A school was founded for children of the family and the children of friends but excluded local children. A dispensary was set up in the house to provide broth and medicines to local residents.[Nicholas Ferrar at Little Gidding - Little Gidding Church website]
/ref>
The community was never a formal religious community, as with a monastery or convent. They did not have an official Rule (such as the Rule of Saint Benedict
The ''Rule of Saint Benedict'' ( la, Regula Sancti Benedicti) is a book of precepts written in Latin in 516 by St Benedict of Nursia ( AD 480–550) for monks living communally under the authority of an abbot.
The spirit of Saint Benedict's Ru ...
), no vows were required, and no enclosure. The Ferrar household lived a Christian life according to High Church
The term ''high church'' refers to beliefs and practices of Christian ecclesiology, liturgy, and theology that emphasize formality and resistance to modernisation. Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term originate ...
principles and the ''Book of Common Prayer
The ''Book of Common Prayer'' (BCP) is the name given to a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion and by other Christian churches historically related to Anglicanism. The original book, published in 1549 in the reign ...
''. They engaged in tending to the health and education of local children, and became skilled in bookbinding
Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book of codex format from an ordered stack of ''signatures'', sheets of paper folded together into sections that are bound, along one edge, with a thick needle and strong thread. Cheaper, b ...
.
The Ferrar household was criticised by Puritans and denounced as a "Protestant Nunnery" and as Arminian
Arminianism is a branch of Protestantism based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609) and his historic supporters known as Remonstrants. Dutch Arminianism was originally articulated in the ''Re ...
heresy; in 1641 it was attacked in a pamphlet entitled
The Arminian Nunnery
. The fame of the Ferrars and the Little Gidding community spread and they attracted visitors. King Charles I Charles I may refer to:
Kings and emperors
* Charlemagne (742–814), numbered Charles I in the lists of Holy Roman Emperors and French kings
* Charles I of Anjou (1226–1285), also king of Albania, Jerusalem, Naples and Sicily
* Charles I of ...
visited Little Gidding three times, including on 2 May 1646 seeking refuge after the Royalist defeat at the Battle of Naseby
The Battle of Naseby took place on 14 June 1645 during the First English Civil War, near the village of Naseby in Northamptonshire. The Parliamentarian New Model Army, commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, destroyed the main R ...
and was given temporary refuge by John Ferrar
John Ferrar (2 December 1588 – 28 December 1657) was a London merchant and brother of Nicholas Ferrar the Younger.This John Ferrar is not to be confused with John Ferrar the Elder of Croxton and London, Esquire, father of Councillor William Far ...
.
When Mary Ferrar died in 1634 she was buried at St John's Church and bequeathed Little Gidding
Little Gidding is a small village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. It lies approximately northwest of Huntingdon, near Sawtry, within Huntingdonshire, which is a district of Cambridgeshire as well as a historic county.
A small p ...
to her son Nicholas Ferrar
Nicholas Ferrar (22 February 1592 – 4 December 1637) was an English scholar, courtier and businessman, who was ordained a deacon in the Church of England. He lost much of his fortune in the Virginia Company and retreated with his extended fami ...
. He died in December 1637 but the community continued under the leadership of his brother, John Ferrar
John Ferrar (2 December 1588 – 28 December 1657) was a London merchant and brother of Nicholas Ferrar the Younger.This John Ferrar is not to be confused with John Ferrar the Elder of Croxton and London, Esquire, father of Councillor William Far ...
until 1657, when he and his sister Susanna Collet died within a month of each other. After her death John Farrer was to describe his mother as, "the head in the Body and the Bond and Simont (cement) to hould the whole Body of our Family United not only in Cohabitation but in Hartes". Years later he wrote to his son of "Your Pious Grandmother and devoute Vnkell sthe Founders of our Family and p eent State We possess in Gidding". A family friend was to write to her nephew Arthur Wodenoth that he recalled Mary Ferrar as "one who brought a new Religion into the world."[
]
References
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Farrar, Mary
1551 births
1634 deaths
17th-century Anglicans
17th-century Christian mystics
Bookbinders
Anglican nuns
People from Little Gidding
Protestant mystics