ROBERT

See also:

• FERRAR, NICHOLAS (1592-1637)
• ROBERT FERRAR (d. 1555)

FERRAR (d. 1555)  , bishop of St David's and martyr, born about the end of the 15th century of a Yorkshire family, is said to have been educated at Cambridge, whence he proceeded to Oxford and became a canon regular of St Augustine . He came under the influence of Thomas Gerrard and Lutheran theology, and was compelled to bear a faggot with Anthony Dalaber and others in 1528 . He graduated B.D. in 1533, accompanied Bishop Barlow on his embassy to Scotland in 1535, and was made prior of St Oswald's at Nostell near Pontefract . At the dissolution he surrendered his priory without compunction to the crown, and received a liberal pension . For the rest of Henry's reign his career is obscure; perhaps he fled abroad on the enactment of the Six Articles . He certainly married, and is said to have been made Cranmer's chaplain, and bishop of Sodor and Man; but he was never consecrated to that see . After the accession of Edward VI., Ferrar was, probably through the influence of Bishop Barlow, appointed chaplain to Protector Somerset, a royal visitor, and bishop of St David's on Barlow's translation to Bath and Wells in 1548 . He was the first bishop appointed by letters patent under the act passed in 1547 without the form of capitular election; and the service performed at his consecration was also novel, being in English; he also preached at St Paul's on the 11th of November clad only as a priest and not as a bishop, and inveighed against vestments and altars . At St David's he had trouble at once with his singularly turbulent chapter, who, finding that he was out of favour at court since Somerset's fall in 1549, brought a long list of fantastic charges against him . He had taught his child to whistle dined with his servants, talked of " worldly things such as baking, brewing, enclosing, ploughing and mining," preferred walking to riding, and denounced the debasement of the coinage . He seems to have been a kindly, homely, somewhat feckless person like many an excellent parish priest, who did not conceal his indignation at some of Northumberland's deeds . He had voted against the act of November 1549 for a reform of the canon law, and on a later occasion his nonconformity brought him into conflict with the Council; he was also the only bishop who satisfied Hooper's test of sacramental orthodoxy .

The Council accordingly listened to the accusations of Ferrar's chapter, and in 1552 he was summoned to

London and imprisoned on a charge of praemunire incurred by omitting the king's authority in a commission which he issued for the visitation of his diocese . Imprisonment on such a charge under Northumberland might have been expected to lead to liberation under Mary . But Ferrar had been a monk and was married . Even so, it is difficult to see on what legal ground he was kept in the queen's bench prison after July 1553; for Mary herself was repudiating the royal authority in religion . Ferrar's marriage accounts for the loss of his bishopric in March 1554, and his opinions for his further punishment . As soon as the heresy laws and ecclesiastical jurisdiction had been re-established, Ferrar was examined by Gardiner, and then with signal indecency sent down to be tried by Morgan, his successor in the bishopric of St David's . He appealed from Morgan's sentence to Pole as papal legate, but in vain, and was burnt at Caermarthen on the 3oth of March 1555 . It was perhaps the most wanton of all Mary's acts of persecution; Ferrar had been no such protagonist of the Reformation as Cranmer, Ridley, Hooper and Latimer; he had had nothing to do with Northumberland's or Wyatt's conspiracy . He had taken no part in politics, and, so far as is known, had not said a word or raised a hand against Mary . He was burnt simply because he could not change his religion with the law and would not pretend that he could; and his execution is a complete refutation of the idea that Mary only persecuted heretics because and when they were traitors . See Dictionary of National Biography, xviii . 380-382, and authorities there cited .

Also Acts of the Privy Council (1550–1554) ; H . A . L .

Fisher, Political History of England, vol. vi . (A . F .