(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 _Thomæ Caii Vindiciæ_, 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."