enemy Constantine in Carmarthen Church. He was required to answer whether he believed in the lawfulness of clerical matrimony and in transubstantiation. For some time Ferrar refused to answer. At another sitting Morgan pronounced him contumacious, and condemned him; but on 4 March Ferrar offered to answer the articles within a competent time. On 7 March at another session Ferrar refused subscription to articles ‘invented and excogitated by man.’ At last on 13 March, after Ferrar had appealed from Morgan to Archbishop Pole, final sentence was passed upon him, and, the appeal being disregarded, he was handed over to the secular arm. On 30 March he was burnt ‘on the south side of the market cross,’ probably in the open space now called Nott Square. He endured his sufferings with great fortitude, and told a bystander that ‘if he saw him once to stir in the pains of his burning he should then give no credit to his doctrine.’ He never moved, but ‘even as he stood (holding up his stumps) so he continued, till one Richard Gravell, with a staff dashed him upon the head and so struck him down.’
Ferrar's son, Samuel, obtained preferment in the diocese of St. David's. His daughter married Lewis Williams, rector of Narberth.
[Foxe's Acts and Monuments, ed. Townsend, v. 428, vi. 146, 222, 553, 664, 705, vii. 1–28; the full depositions of the 127 witnesses are preserved with other matter in Harl. MS. 420, f. 80 sq., some of the documents being printed in Foxe; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 759–61; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 125–6; Burnet's Hist. of the Reformation, ed. Pocock, ii. 127, iii. 350, 362, v. 197–205; Bradford's Writings, i. 305, 374, 403, ii. 96, 169–71 (Parker Soc.); Parker Correspondence, pp. 267, 287 (Parker Soc.); Robinson's Zurich Letters, 3rd series, pp. 72, 76, 645 (Parker Soc.); Rymer's Fœdera, vol. xv.; Strype's Cranmer, pp. 187, 209, 261, 262, 442, 489–90, 495; Eccl. Memorials, vol. i. pt. i. p. 569, vol. iii. pt. i. pp. 127, 423–31, and vol. iii. pt. ii. pp. 355–61; Gent. Mag. new ser. xxix. 245–7, 360, 480.]
FERRERS, Lord of Chartley. [See Devereux, Walter, d. 1558.]
FERRERS, Lord of Groby. [See Grey, Sir John, d. 1461.]
FERRERS, Earl. [See Shirley, Laurence, 1720-1760; Shirley, Washington, fifth Earl, d. 1778.]
FERRERS, BENJAMIN (d. 1732), portrait-painter, was deaf and dumb from his birth, and appears to have resided in Westminster. He painted a portrait of William Beveridge, bishop of St. Asaph, who was his kinsman, taken from the dead body of the bishop, who died at Westminster 5 March 1706–7; the portrait is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and was engraved by W. Sherwin, both in mezzotint and line, by Michael van der Gucht, as a frontispiece to his works, and by Trotter. Ferrers also painted a picture of the court of chancery under Lord-chancellor Macclesfield, with numerous portraits. This picture was in the possession of Dr. Lort of Cambridge, who gave it to the Earl of Hardwicke, and at the sale of the Wimpole pictures in 1888 it was purchased by the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery. Ferrers died in 1732, and a Latin panegyric on him was written by his friend, Vincent Bourne [q. v.], of Westminster School.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting; Vincent Bourne's Poematia; Norris's Catalogue of the Pictures in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
FERRERS, EDWARD (d. 1564), is described by Wood as a distinguished dramatist of the reign of Edward VI. Wood suggests, without advancing any proof, that he was educated at Oxford. His name does not appear on the register. We know that one Edward Ferrers of Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire, died 11 Aug. 1564. He was the son of Henry Ferrers (d. 1526), married in 1548 Bridget, daughter of William, lord Windsor, and was father of Henry Ferrers [q. v.] the antiquary. He was buried in Tarbick Church, Worcestershire (Dugdale, Warwickshire, 1730, ii. 971–3). Another Edward Ferrers was one of the band of gentlemen pensioners at Elizabeth's court on 1 June 1565, when he was assessed in a subsidy roll as owner of forty shillings worth of land in the parish of St. Dunstan and ward of Farringdon, London. But there is no evidence that either of these men was a dramatist. Wood was clearly misled by the mistakes of Puttenham in his ‘Arte of English Poesie,’ 1589, and of Meres in his ‘Palladis Tamia,’ 1598, who both attributed to an Edward Ferrers or Ferris literary work which should have been placed to the credit of George Ferrers [q. v.] Ritson, while correcting Wood's chief errors, nevertheless maintained that there was probably a dramatist named Edward Ferrers as well as the poet George Ferrers; but Puttenham and Meres are clearly guilty of misprinting ‘Edward’ for ‘George’ Ferrers, and there is no evidence outside their testimony to show that Edward Ferrers as an author had any existence.
[Art. George Ferrers, infra; Wood's Athenæ Oxon., ed. Bliss; Warton's Hist. of English Poetry,
