Ferrars

, or Farrars, a Warwickshire gentleman of good family, bred at Oxford, a poet likewise, and much in the good graces of Henry VIII. Wood calls him a very ingenious man; and says, that he wrote several tragedies and comedies, none of which are extant. He died in the year 1564.

There was a Henry Ferrars too, of the same county and family, bred at Oxford, and afterwards famous for his knowledge and skill in heraldry, genealogies, and antiquities. Wood says, that out of the collections of this gentleman, Dugdale laid part of the foundation of his elaborate work entitled “The Antiquities of Warwickshire illustrated;” and that, after Dugdale' s death, several of Ferrars’ s collections, that had come into his hands, were reposited in the Ashmolean Museum. Ferrars was well known to, and respected by, Camden, who, in his discourse of the antiquity of Coventry, makes this honourable mention of him: “Thus much of Coventry; yet have you not all this of me, but, willingly to acknowledge by whom I have profited, of Henry Ferrars of Baldesly, a man both for parentage and knowledge of antiquity very commendable, and my special friend; who both in this place, and also elsewhere, hath at all times courteously shewed me the right way when I was out, and from his candle, as it were, hath lightened mine.” Henry Ferrars had also, in his younger days, a good talent at poetry, some specimens of which, Wood tells us, he had seen scattered in divers books, printed in the reign of Elizabeth. He died in 1633, aged eighty-four “leaving behind him,” says Wood^ “the character of a well-bred gentleman, a good neighbour, and an honest man.” ¹