Nicholas Ferrar is notable for his involvement in the foundation, with his mother and sister, of the religious community at Little Gidding. It seems that most of what is known about him is available here. From a wealthy family and ordained a deacon by William Laud, he and others devoted themselves to lives of prayer and service. George Herbert was associated with the community, and Herbert appointed Ferrar his literary executor. Ferrar died in 1637 and the community forced to disband, its buildings pillaged during the Civil War.

It may be that the presence of Ferrar in our calendar, and the prominence of Little Gidding in Anglican memory is due largely to T.S. Eliot, who titled one of the Four Quartets “Little Gidding.”

Here are some lines:

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire
beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.