The Ferrar papers, 1590-1790, in Magdalene College ... - Microform

Reverend Joshua Mapletoft, in Essex, but in the 1630s many letters
also passed between three generations of Ferrar women: cdd Mrs
Ferrar td.1634), her daughter Susanna Collett (d.1657) who was
sometimes at Little Gidding and sometimes at Bourn in
Cambridgeshire, and the five eldest of Susanna's eight daughters,
of whom three married and left home, respectively in 1628, 1635,
and 1636.
The silence thalt fell on Little Gidding for about a decade
after Nicholas Ferriir's death in 1637 is rendered less noticeable
by the later acquisition of Brooke family letters. In 1657 John
Ferrar I1 married Anne Rrcsnke, the daughter of a Leicestershire
knight. Sir Thomas Brooke was a member of a Midlands cousinage of
Feildings, Herr idges, Braukes and Caves: and when Anne's sister
Goodeth died Ln 1631 without surviving descendants, a small number
of Brooke papers, the earliest dating from 1616, came to Little
Gidding.
By the 3640s Ferrar thrift had introduced a habit which
compl icates a cataloguer's task: John Ferrar and his two children,
Virginia and John 13, began re-using earlier items from the
collection for drafting letters, keeping estate accounts, or
recording the business of local government. Where the later
writings are of significant length and af a markedly different date
from that of the original document, they have been given a separate
entry in the chronological list, but in the interests of economy
the documents have nc't been filmed a second time.
This habit of t:hrift also extended tca John 11's son, the
Reverend Thomas Ferrar, and his sonF John Ferrar IV. In sorting
the cnllection and making ncqtes from it, the two of them tore from
many of the letters that part of the sheet of paper which bore the
address. On daing sa, howeveri they copied the address on to the
text of the letter, apparently exactly as it was given by the
original author. (I:n several cases the separated address survives,
and it. has been possible to match it with its twin text and verify
the accuracy of the Ferrars' transcriptions. 1
For over a cent:ury the collection passed by inheritance from
father to 5.313, descending from John I (~.1589-1657? to John I1
(1630-17201 to John I11 (1660-17371, but even before John died
childless, it apparently passed to his next brother, the Reverend
Thcmas Ferrar 11663--1739:). His elder san, John Ferrar IV (i7@@-
17313?, having died unmarried some months before his father, the
estate together with the ccdlection passed first to his younger
brother Thomas (1707-48), who also died unmarried, and then to his
sister Judith