Nicholas Ferrar, Deacon,
Founder of the Little Gidding Community
4 December -- Commemoration
If celebrated as a Lesser Festival,
Common of Religious, page 494
Born in London in 1592, Nicholas Ferrar was educated at
Clare Hall,
Cambridge and elected a Fellow there in 1610. From 1613, he
travelled extensively on the continent for five years,
trying his hand as a businessman and then as a
parliamentarian on his return. In 1625, he moved to Little
Gidding in Huntingdonshire, then a derelict manor-house with
a chapel which was being used as a hay barn. He was joined
by his brother and sister and their families and by his
mother, and they established together a community life of
prayer, using The Book of Common Prayer, and a
life of charitable works in the locality. He was ordained
to the diaconate by William Laud the year after they
arrived. He wrote to his niece in 1631, "I purpose and hope
by God's grace to be to you not as a master but as a partner
and fellow student." This indicates the depth and feeling
of the community life Nicholas and his family strove to
maintain. After the death of Nicholas on this day in 1637,
the community was broken up in 1646 by the Puritans, who
were suspicious of it and referred to it as the Arminian
Nunnery. They feared it promoting the return of Romish
practices into England, and so all Nicholas's manuscripts
were burned.