p. 683. 693. 697. 702. 713.; and Memoirs of the Life of Mr. Nicholas Ferrar, by Peter Peckard, D.D., Cambridge, 8vo., 1790 (which is reprinted with additions from a manuscript in the archiepiscopal library at Lambeth, in Dr. Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Biography).  In Dr. Peckard’s Preface will be found somewhat respecting “the loss (probably the unjust detention)” of Francis Peck’s manuscript life of Nicholas Ferrar, apparently the same manuscript which DR. RIMBAULT states he has seen.

C.H.  COOPER.

Cambridge, November 16. 1850.

In Nichol’s Litterary Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 519., it is stated that “a capital account of the family of Ferrar was compiled by Mr. Gough for the sixth volume of the second edition of the Biographica Britannica.”  Of the only two copies known to exist of the printed portion of this sixth volume Mr. Chalmers possessed one, and he seems to have used it in the preparation of the life of Ferrar for his Biographical Dictionary.

JOHN J. DREDGE.

DR. RIMBAULT will find many interesting particulars relating to the so-called “Arminian Nunnery,” and the family of Ferrars, together with an account of the present state of the place, in a paper by C. Colson, B.A., Fellow of St. John’s College, entitled “An Account of a Visit to Little Gidding, on the Feast of S. Andrew, 1840,” published in the first part of the Transactions of the Cambridge Camden Society, Stevenson, Cambridge, 1841.

E.V.

Dr. Peckard appears to have had the use of some of Peck’s MSS. (perhaps those referred to by DR. RIMBAULT), but he regrets the loss of a MS. which he had lent to the Rev. Mr. Jones, of Sheepshall, being, a Life of Nicholas Ferrar, by Peck, prepared for the press, but which, after near twenty years’ inquiry, he had been unable to recover.  This suggests the Query, Has it ever yet been recovered?  DR. RIMBAULT’S inquiry regarding Thomas Hearne has been answered by Dr. Dibdin (Bibliomania, London, 1811, p.381.) who informs Dr. Peckard, Dr. Wordsworth, and his Quarterly Reviewer (p. 93), that Hearne, in the Supplement to his Thom.  Caii Vind.  Ant.  Oxon., 1730, 8vo., vol. ii., “had previously published a copious and curious account of the monastery at Little Gidding,” which he says “does not appear to have been known to this latter editor,” meaning Dr. Wordsworth.  I have not Hearne’s work to refer to; but Dr. Dibdin versus Dr. Wordsworth and his Reviewer, as to ignorance of what so well-known an author as Tom Hearne has written, is a little curious.  The word “Arminian,” in DR. RIMBAULT’S Query, requires a remark.  On reading the Memoir which Dr. Wordsworth has edited, he will find (Appendix, p. 247.) that the Ferrars complained of “a libellous pamphlet, entitled the Arminian Nunnery at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire,” and that they repudiated “Arminianism and other fopperies.”  This suggests a further Query:  Is DR. RIMBAULT possessed of that pamphlet?  The attachment to books manifested by the Ferrars family entitles them, I humbly think, to as much space as your “NOTES AND QUERIES” can afford them.