“O Germania gloriosa,
  Tu vasa ex aurichalcis
  Ad nos subinde mittes.”

WILLIAM BELL, Phil.  D.

* * * * *

NICHOLAS FERRAR AND THE SO-CALLED ARMINIAN NUNNERY OF LITTLE GIDDING.

(Vol. ii., pp. 119. 407.)

Hearne, the antiquary, has preserved two curious documents relating to the Little Gidding establishment in the Appendix to his Preface to Peter Langtoff’s Chronicle, Nos.  IX. and X. See also Thomae Caii Vindiciae, vol. ii.  The most complete account of this remarkable man is that by Dr. Peckard, formerly Master of Magdalen College, Cambridge, entitled Memoirs of the Life of Nicholas Ferrar, published in 1790, which has now become extremely scarce, but has been reprinted by Dr. Wordsworth, in his Ecclesiastical Biography, who has given in an Appendix an account of the visit of the younger Nicholas Ferrar to London, from a MS. in the Lambeth Library.  The Life of Nicholas Ferrar, by Dr. Turner, Bishop of Ely, came into the hands of the celebrated Dr. Dodd, who published an abridgment {445} of it in the Christian Magazine of 1761.  This account was again republished, with additions, in 1837, entitled Brief Memorials of Nicholas Ferrar, Founder of a Protestant Religious Establishment at Little Gidding, in Huntingdonshire, by the Rev. T.M.  Macdonogh, Vicar of Bovingdon.  Some further particulars of this family may be found in Barnabas Oley’s preface to Herbert’s Country Parson, and in Bishop Hacket’s Life of Archbishop Williams.  In Baker’s MSS. (vol. xxxv. p. 389.) in the Public Library of Cambridge, is an article entitled “Large Materials for writing the Life of Mr. Nicholas Ferrar.”  Isaac Walton, in his Life of George Herbert, also notices Ferrar, and describes minutely his mode of life at Little Gidding.  From an advertisement at the end of Francis Peck’s Memoirs of Cromwell, it appears that Peck had prepared for publication a Life of Mr. Nicholas Ferrar, no doubt the manuscript collections noticed by MR. RIMBAULT (p. 407.): 

“Little Gidding,” it has been observed, “was in England what Port Royal was in France.  Ardent devotion to the Redeemer characterised both.  In each, peace, charity, good order, and love to the souls and bodies of men, were eminently exhibited; upon each the hand of persecution fell with unrelenting severity.  Port Royal was destroyed by the Jesuits; Little Gidding by the Puritans.”

J.Y.

Hoxton.

Arminian Nunnery in Huntingdonshire (Vol. ii., p. 407.).—­Allow me to refer DR. RIMBAULT to Hacket’s Life of Archbishop Williams, Part ii. p. 50.; Izaak Walton’s Life of George Herbert; Peter Langloft’s Chronicle, ed.  Hearne, Preface, sect xi., Appendix to Preface, Nos.  IX. and X.; Caii Vindiciae Antiquitatis Academiae Oxoniensis, ed.  Hearne, vol. ii.