NICHOLAS FERRAR

NICHOLAS FERRAR (1592-1637), a religious enthusiast in the reign of Charles I.; was elected a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1610; afterwards devoted himself to medicine and travelled on the Continent; subsequently joined his father in business in London, and entered Parliament in 1624; but a year later retired to the country, and at Little Gidding, Huntingdonshire, founded, with some of his near relations, a religious community, known as the "Arminian Nunnery," some account of which is given in Shorthouse's "John Inglesant"; it was broken up by the Puritans in 1647; he was the intimate friend of George Herbert; this community consisted of some "fourscore persons, devoted to a kind of Protestant monasticism; they followed celibacy and merely religious duties, employed themselves in binding prayer-books, &c., in alms-giving and what charitable work was possible to them in their desert retreat, kept up, night and day, a continual repetition of the English liturgy, never allowing at any hour the sacred fire to go out".