Mary Ferrar
Mary Ferrar (1551 – 1634) was the
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.[1] Described as a "woman of fervent piety and a model mother", in 1581 at St Gabriel Fenchurch in London she married Nicholas Ferrar the Elder (1546-1620), a merchant of London, Master of the Skinners' Company[2] and an investor in the Virginia Company who traded very extensively with the East and West Indies. He was interested in the adventures of Hawkins, Drake and Raleigh.[3] 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 (1588–1657), a London merchant and Deputy Governor and Treasurer of the Virginia Company of London[4][n 1]
- Nicholas Ferrar (1592-1637), a scholar, courtier, businessman and ordained deacon in the Church of England
- William Ferrar (1594-1637)
- Richard Farrar (1596-1637).[3] 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".[5]
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 to Thomas Sheppard. The Ferrars and Wodenoths were investors in the Virginia Company[7] and other colonial projects[3] and when the Virginia Company collapsed in 1624 taking with it a large portion of their fortune John Ferrar faced financial ruin.[8] Mary Ferrar realised that a home needed to be found for her family. She looked at Little Gidding and the population having declined in this rural area Sheppard sold the practically derelict property to Mary's son Nicholas Ferrar and her nephew Arthur Wodenoth (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.[3]
In 1625 during a period of plague in London Mary Ferrar took refuge with her daughter Susanna Collet near Bourn in Cambridgeshire, 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 and son-in-law John Collet.[1]
Between 1625 and 1629 Nicholas Ferrar spent much of his time in London and in 1626 he was ordained as a
Soon the small community was joined by Mary's son
The community was never a formal religious community, as with a monastery or convent. They did not have an official Rule (such as the
The Ferrar household was criticised by Puritans and denounced as a "Protestant Nunnery" and as
When Mary Ferrar died in 1634 she was buried at St John's Church and bequeathed Little Gidding to her son Nicholas Ferrar. He died in December 1637 but the community continued under the leadership of his brother, John Ferrar until 1657, when he and his sister Susanna Collet died within a month of each other.[12] 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 [as] the Founders of our Family and p[re]sent 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."[1]
References
- ^ a b c d Joyce Ransome, The Web of Friendship: Nicholas Ferrar and Little Gidding, James Clarke and Co, Cambridge (2011) - Google Books
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press, 2004), (http://www.oxforddnb.com.rp.nla.gov.au/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-9356: accessed 8 March 2018
- ^ a b c d Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography, Volume 1, Lewis Historical Publishing Company, New York (1915) p. 24
- ^ Kingsbury, Susan Myra (1906). "The Records of the Virginia Company of London, Vol II". Government Printing Office, Washington. Retrieved 2018-12-28.
- ^ J E B Mayor, ed, Nicholas Ferrar. Two Lives by his Brother John and by Doctor Jebb, Cambridge in the Seventeenth Century. Part I. Nicholas Ferrar, (Cambridge: Printed for the Editor, 1855), 380, Digital Image Internet Archive (https://archive.org/stream/nicholasferrartw00mayouoft#page/380/mode/2up : accessed 8 March 2018)
- ^ Skipton, Horace Pott Kennedy (1907). The Life and Times of Nicholas Ferrar. London: A. R. Mowbray. p. 136.
- ^ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1900). . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 62. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- ^ a b c Clive Aslet, Villages of Britain: The Five Hundred Villages that Made the Countryside, Bloomsbury (2010) - Google Books pp. 252-254
- ^ a b "A brief history of Little Gidding" (The Official Website of St John's Church, Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire, England). Retrieved 4 January 2013.
- ^ Nicholas Ferrar at Little Gidding - Little Gidding Church website
- ^ "Memoirs of the Life of Nicholas Ferrar". Cambridge [Eng.] Printed by J. Archdeacon<.
- ^ A History of the County of Huntingdon. Vol. 1. Victoria County History. 1926. pp. 399–406.
Notes
- ^ This John Ferrar is not to be confused with John Ferrar the Elder of Croxton and London, Esquire, father of Councillor William Farrar