render. He retired to some relatives in Yorkshire, where he remained till summoned to Carisbrooke by his royal master. Here he preached the last sermon Charles heard before he went up to London for his trial and execution, afterwards published: ‘A Sermon on Habak. ii. 3, preached before his Majesty at Newport, in the Isle of Wight, 29 Nov. 1648, being the fast day,’ London, 1648–9, 4to. Ferne was deprived of his living and again withdrew to Yorkshire (probably to Sandbeck, whence his will was dated in 1659). There he lived quietly upon his private means till the Restoration, publishing between 1647 and 1660 a series of theological pamphlets, chiefly in defence of the reformed church against the Roman catholic: ‘Of the Division between the English and Romish Churches upon the Reformation by way of answer to the seemingly plausible pretences of the Romish party,’ London, 20 July 1652; ‘Certain Considerations of Present Concernment touching this Reformed Church of England, with a particular examination of Anthony Champneys, Dr. of the Sorbonne,’ London, 1653, 12mo; ‘A Compendious Discourse upon the case as it stands between the Church of England and of Rome on the one hand, and again between the same Church of England and those Congregationalists which have divided from it on the other hand,’ London, 1655, 8vo, 2nd ed. Bodl.; ‘A Brief Survey of Antiquity for the Trial of the Romish Church;’ ‘An Enlarged Answer to Mr. Spencer's book, entitled “Scripture Mistaken,”’ London, 8vo, 1660.
In 1656 Ferne dared to censure ‘Oceana,’ a copy having been sent him by Harrington's sister, whereupon the author published the correspondence that passed between them, under the title of ‘Pian Piano; or intercourse between H.F., D.D., and J. Harrington, Esq., upon occasion of the Dr.'s censure of the Commonwealth of Oceana,’ 1656 (Bodl.). At the Restoration Charles II at once confirmed his father's patent to Ferne of the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, and during the eighteen months of his headship he was twice made vice-chancellor (1660 and 1661). He showed his moderation by readmitting all who had been made fellows of Trinity under the Commonwealth, and his consistency by only suffering those divines who were conformable and had renounced presbyterianism to preach at St. Mary's. Early in 1661 Ferne also received the deanery of Ely, promised to him by a royal warrant from Brussels in 1659 (Kennett, p. 644). He was installed 12 March 1660–1, and was twice prolocutor of the lower house of convocation during that year. In 1662 he resigned his mastership, deanery, and Medbourne (to which living he had been restored at the Restoration), on being promoted to the see of Chester, where he succeeded Dr. Walton, whom he is said to have helped in his Polyglot Bible. Ferne was consecrated bishop of Chester on Shrove Sunday (9 Feb. 1661–2), but died exactly five weeks afterwards (Sunday, 16 March) in the house of his kinsman, Mr. Nevill, in St. Paul's Churchyard. He was buried 25 March in St. Edmund's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, where he lies under a brass with his arms and a Latin inscription, which records that he attended Charles I during his imprisonments almost to the last. Two heralds, in token of royal respect, attended his funeral. A curious proof of his conscientiousness is given in his will: a bequest of 10l. to Trinity College, ‘by way of restitution, fearing that I did not discharge those petty stewardships (which I sometime bore there) so faithfully as I should.’ He left money to the poor of three Yorkshire parishes, and four ‘poor ministers,’ while his ‘beloved brother-in-law, Clement Nevill,’ at whose house he died, received his library (ib. p. 644). Wood and Kennett both give him an excellent character, not only for devotion and piety, but for a sweet temper under all his trials. ‘One who knew him from his youth’ told Wood that ‘his only fault was that he could not be angry’ (Athenæ, ed. Bliss, viii. 534). Besides the works given above he published ‘A Sermon on Judges v. 15, preached at the publique faste 12 April 1644, at St. Marie's, Oxford, before the members of the hon. House of Commons there assembled,’ Oxford, 1644, 4to; ‘An Appeal to Scripture and Antiquity on the Questions of the Worship and Invocation of Saints and Angels, &c., against the Romanists,’ London, 1665, 12mo.
[Brit. Mus. Cat. of Printed Books; Bodl. Cat.; Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, pt. ii. p. 43; Nichols's Leicestershire, ii. 723; Chalmers's Biog. Dict.; Chester's Westminster Abbey Reg.]
FERNE, Sir JOHN (d. 1609), writer on heraldry, was the son of William Ferne of Temple Belwood in the isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire, who came originally from Doncaster, Yorkshire, by his wife Ann, daughter and heiress of John Sheffield of Beltoft, Lincolnshire. When about seventeen years of age he was sent to Oxford, and placed, as Wood conceives, either at St. Mary's Hall or at University College; but, leaving the university without a degree, he entered himself a student of the Inner Temple in November 1576 (Students admitted to the Inner Temple, 1547–1660, ed. W. H. Cooke, p. 82,
