Ransome 2009
Ransome, Joyce. "'Voluntary Anglicanism': The Contribution of Little Gidding." The Seventeenth Century 24.1 (2013): 52-73.
LG's "web of friendship" left memorial remnants: Francis Turner's biography, "other memories of LG as a 'religious society'" (52)
Turner's biography circulated in manuscript, "particularly, after 1689, among Nonjurors, several of whom copied extracts of it which have survived where the complete biography has perished" (52) -- Nonjurors like Thomas Ken, Robert Nelson; and people like Edward Fowler and John Mapletoft "who were prepared to reach out to Nonconformists" (53)
"a reconstruc- tion of the networks that connected such men to each other and provided contacts through which information about Gidding could flow suggests a significant link between the voluntarism of Little Gidding and these later developments among ‘voluntary Anglicans’. indeed the lasting significance of Little Gidding lies more in the survival and ongoing influence of its remem- bered example than in any immediate influence it exerted in the Church of England of Ferrar’s day." (54)
voluntarism baked into LG's way of life
after NF's death, John Ferrar in 1650s compiled biographical materials for "Historian," probably Barnabas Oley
"A 1655 set of ‘Directions’, a framework for arranging the material, directed that Ferrar’s life should be divided into eight chron- ological sections, within each of which the appropriate details were to be
placed. 10 The ‘Directions’ would appear to be the work of the ‘Historian’ rather than John himself because they advised the recipient, probably John with the help of his sister susanna and niece Mary, that by ‘rubbing up your memory’s & by Conference together’ they could supply the historian with material appropriate to each of the sections. A postscript, evidently John’s response, then rehearsed how well qualified the ‘Historian’ was for the task ‘because you so well know all [tha]t happened in [th]e time after my mothers Death here at Gidding [May/June 1634], by your often & frequent good company that we were so happy then to enjoy.’" (54)
"Whilst Oley never completed a formal biography of Ferrar, 13 he maintained, more importantly for the subse- quent influence of Little Gidding, contacts that eventually produced a new historian to complete the task.
Among those contacts was Mary Collet Ferrar, Nicholas and John’s eldest niece, whose significant part in preserving the story of Gidding deserves more general recognition. 14 After her uncle John had died in 1657 his son John Ferrar Jr. had inherited Gidding, and, at the instigation of his wife and her brother-in-law the Reverend Basil Berridge, had more or less forced Mary to leave Gidding. 15 she had moved to Highgate to live with her brother Thomas and took with her papers and books that were hers, often books she had herself bound." (55) -- see letters FP1284, 1285, 1306, 1320
"Her will stands as evidence of those contacts and of her importance as a channel for preserving and transmitting those memories. 18 Oley received a mourning ring worth £1 as did Oley’s former pupil at Clare, Peter Gunning. Whether Gunning had actually visited Gidding in the 1630s is not certain though her gift suggests it as a reasonable possibility, particularly since Gunning did contribute, along with Oley and Richard Crashaw, a lauda- tory poem to the preface of Ferrar’s Hygiasticon." (55)
"Joseph Beaumont, a Fellow and later Master of Peterhouse, also had Ferrar connections. He was a friend not only of Richard Crashaw, a frequent visitor to Gidding in the 1630s and one who spoke of Mary Collet Ferrar as his ‘mother’, but also of her much younger brother Ferrar Collet, also of Peterhouse. 20 Given Mary Ferrar’s affectionate remembrance that Crashaw relayed to Beaumont in his 1644 letter, her bequest to Beaumont of a £1 ring is not surprising. in the 1650s he also supplied John Ferrar with some ‘verses on silkworms’, perhaps to bolster John’s promotional efforts for Virginia." (55-6)
"in the 1655 ‘Directions’ to Ferrar’s biographer, there appears as a marginal note the enigmatic comment ‘NB. His Observa[ci]ons abroad were especially of a regular & religis monasterys [sic]. y[i]s designe was ever in his Mind’. 27 yet the surviving Turner transcripts, in their accounts of Ferrar’s time on the Continent, make virtually no reference to monas- teries whilst devoting considerable attention to Ferrar’s valiant resistance to Catholic attempts to convert him. Why did Turner ignore monasteries and stress antipopery?" (56-7)
plan to use Ferrar's biography in 1680s as weapon against Whig attacks on popish biships, bolster Tories
Thurscross, efforts to persuade Worthington to untdertake publishing Ferrar papers
John Mapletoft -- Susanna Collet's son, raised at Little Gidding from 1635-1643
later become active member of Society for Promoting Christian Knowledget (SPCK)