FERRERS, John (1566-1633), of Tamworth, Warws. and Walton-on-Trent, Derbys.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. 1566, 2nd but 1st surv. s. of Sir Humphrey Ferrers of Tamworth and Walton-on-Trent by Anne or Jane, da. of Sir Humphrey Bradbourne of Lea, Derbys. educ. Trinity, Oxf. 1583; L. Inn 1584. m. 1592, Dorothy, da. of Sir John Puckering, at least 1s. 2da. suc. fa. 1608. Kntd. 1603.1

Offices Held

J.p.q. Warws. by 1608, sheriff 1614-15.2

Biography

Ferrers was overshadowed by his father in the Elizabethan period, but his family were influential in the borough, where, by a fortunate marriage early in the fifteenth century, they had acquired property on the Warwickshire side of the border, including Tamworth castle, in addition to considerable lands elsewhere in the county and in Staffordshire and Herefordshire. Ferrers’s father inherited the stewardship of the borough about 1576 but his first use of the office for parliamentary patronage was during the Earl of Leicester’s absence in the Netherlands in 1586, when he brought in John Ferrers. Just before the next general election, in October 1588, Leicester’s stepson, the 2nd Earl of Essex, who was then building up his parliamentary interest, anticipated a device to become commonplace in the 1680s. He obtained a new charter for Tamworth naming himself high steward in complete disregard of the rights of Ferrers senior, who was ‘advised’ by Burghley not to oppose Essex ‘for an office of so little value’. John Ferrers was thus left out in the cold, but, by 1593 he was married to Lord Keeper Puckering’s daughter and, perhaps as some sort of compromise with Essex (at any rate with his ‘good liking’), he again obtained a Tamworth seat. There is no evidence that Ferrers wished to sit in 1597, when his brother-in-law George Hyde took the seat instead.3

Ferrers died in 1633, before 5 Nov., when his will was proved.4

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: P. W. Hasler

Notes

  • 1. Al. Ox. i(2), 493; J. C. Wedgwood, Staffs. Parl. Hist. (Wm. Salt Arch. Soc.), i. 386; PCC 107 Russell; Vis. Warws. (Harl. Soc. xii), 7.
  • 2. SP14/33.
  • 3. Shaw, Staffs. i. 418 seq.; C. F. Palmer, Tamworth, 105, 113, 116-17, 363 seq., 504; APC, x. 201, 214, 259; HMC Hatfield, xii. 441; Add. 28175, ff. 28, 64.
  • 4. PCC 107 Russell.